Soon after the congress, the presentation of the JARI Medal and Hubbel Award took place. On Monday October 18th, the ceremony was broacasted at the ICNCT platform, with the participation of the Awards Selection Committee of 2021: Dr. Richard Hugtenburg (editor in chief of Applied Radiation and Isotopes, ARI), Dr. Lianne van der Zant (Publisher of Applied Radiation & Isotopes at Elsevier) and Prof. Ignacio Porras (President of the ISNCT). Richard Hugtenburg gave a presentation of the history of the JARI Medal and the Hubbel Award and introduced the 2021 winners. He also stressed the importance of neutron capture community to Applied Radiation and Isotopes, reflected in the Special Issues, and thanked the ISNCT researchers for their valuable contributions to ARI. You can find more information about these awards here.
Saverio Altieri, the 2021 JARI Medal winner
The JARI medal recognizes a scientist who has made outstanding life-time contributions to the field of radiation physics. The 2021 JARI Medal winner is Prof. Saverio Altieri, from Department of Physics of University of Pavia and INFN, Italy. Having been working in the Applied Nuclear Energy Laboratory since 1983, Professor Altieri’s main research activity is focused on boron neutron capture therapy and reactor physics. He has published over 140 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, and he is a member of the Board of Councilors of the ISNCT. Prof. Altieri has extensively worked on the development of techniques of boron concentration determination and imaging, as alpha-spectrometry and neutron autoradiography. He has also worked in the design and construction of the irradiation position of an explanted liver in the thermal column of the LENA reactor, and in the gamma and neutron dosimetry. He has played a major role in the Taormina project (Advanced Organ Treatment by Neutron Irradiation and Auto-transplantation) where BNCT was developed to the treatment of diffuse hepatic metastases and culminated with the treatment of two patients at the beginning of the 21st century. In the words of Dr. Hugtenburg, “the achievement was very exciting at the time, and it was a motivation for directing the prize to Saverio Altieri”.
Prof. Altieri was honoured to receive the JARI medal and he thanked the commitee and his collaborators for this achievement. He specially mentioned his gratitude to Prof. T. Pinelli and Prof. A. Zonta for the opportunity to contribute as a physicist to the Taormina Project. Currently he is collaborating with the Italian National Hadron Therapy Center (CNAO) for the realization of an Accelerator Based BNCT facility in Pavia.
The JARI medal award winner is involved in the process of selecting the Hubbel prize.
Hiroaki Kumada, the Hubbel Award winner
The Hubbel award recognizes outstanding work in the radiation sciences. The recipient of the 2021 Hubbel prize is Prof. Hiroaki Kumada, from University of Tsukuba, Japan. Prof. Hiroaki Kumada has been engaged in research on BNCT for more than 20 years and he is actually Technical Chair (Physics) at the Executive Board of the ISNCT. He and his colleagues were the first to perform BNCT in the Japan Research Reactor No. 4 (JRR-4). After designing and characterizing the neutron facility, more than 100 BNCT cases were treated by 2011 at the JRR-4 in the frame of clinical trials. He developed the Monte Carlo-based treatment planning system and participated in all the trials, both in the treatment planning and dose estimations.
Since 2009, he has been working at University of Tsukuba, where he designed the beam shaping assembly of linac-based BNCT device, placed in the Proton Medical Research of that institution. Prof. Kumada expressed his honour and happiness to attend the ceremony along with members of the ISNCT. He also shared his experience writing his first paper on BNCT for a Special Issue of ARI in 2004, where he received support from editors and reviewers. Since then, he has published about 100 papers in peer-review journals. He has also acted as a reviewer for ARI, so thanked the journal for contributing to his growth as a researcher. He recommended BNCT young researchers to publish in ARI, a journal suitable for reporting the research results on the application to the field of medical physics, in particular BNCT.
Ignacio Porras closed the ceremony by stressing the relevance of Prof. Altieri and Prof. Kumada in the ISNCT and he thanked Applied Radiation and Isotopes fo for the continued support to BNCT. Congratulations, Saverio and Hiroaki, for these wonderful awards and for your contribution to the society!