RICHLAND, Wash. – The director of a Washington State University repository and research program in radiation health effects will be one of the leading speakers at the 54th annual meeting of the Health Physics Society in Minneapolis in July 2009.
Anthony C. James, director since 2005 of the U.S. Transuranium and Uranium Registries at WSU Tri-Cities, will be the Landauer Memorial Lecturer and opening speaker on the second day of the five-day conference.
James has been a researcher in radiation biology and health physics for almost 40 years. He has a doctorate degree in radiation biology and a bachelor’s degree in physics, both from the University of London. He is a Chartered Radiation Professional (CRadP) of the UK’s Radiological Protection Society.
The USTUR has been a WSU program since 1992 when the U.S. Department of Energy awarded a three-year grant to the College of Pharmacy to manage and operate the program, which was established in 1968 as the federal National Plutonium Registry.
The USTUR is a human tissue repository and research program providing long-term followup of the effects on human tissues and organs of accidental internal ingestion of radioactive elements. It continues to accept donations for research and since 1996, it also has housed and managed a collection of animal tissue specimens and data from government sponsored radiobiology studies performed at various national laboratories and universities since the 1940s.
The Landuer Memorial Lecture began in Chicago in 1971 at Northwestern University in honor of Dr. Robert S. Landauer, a prominent radiological physicist and teacher for many years in Chicago.