News 2025

Next year we are hosting our 7th Summer School in Medical Physics 2026 with the topic "3D Printing Concepts and Techniques in Medical Physics". The course will be offered with an online phase (mid of August to mid of September 2026) followed by a hybrid attendance phase taking place from September 28 to October 2, 2026 in Heidelberg, so that participants can attend either in person or 100% virtually from around the globe. 

More information will follow in January 2026 on the course website: www.dkfz.de/summer_school2026

From Nov. 17 to Nov. 21, 2025 we successfully finished our Hybrid Courses in Particle Therapy. The courses were organized under the auspices of the Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO) in close cooperation with the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center (HIT), the University Hospital Heidelberg as well as the heiSKILLS Centre, Department of Postgraduate Studies of Heidelberg University. The week started with interactive online sessions on Zoom with our experts to discuss radiobiological aspects as well as clinical cases in particle therapy. The courses were concluded by our hybrid attendance phase on Thursday and Friday taking place at DKFZ in Heidelberg. It was very nice meeting participants from around the globe both online and in person in Heidelberg. Thanks to everyone who participated, for creating such a nice atmosphere during the course. 

And thanks to our speakers Jeannette Jansen, Jennifer Hardt, Caroline Edel, Oliver Jäkel, Semi Harrabi, Christian Karger, Tobias Becher, Stefan Scheloske. 

Looking forward to the next round scheduled for October and November 2026. For more information go to www.dkfz.de/particle_course_en
 

As part of our cooperation with the Chulabhorn Royal Academy (CRA) in Bangkok, Thailand, the elective module “Particle Therapy” was offered purely virtually in the Master's program in Medical Physics from August to early November 2025. Students learned the physical and radiobiological basics of particle therapy and worked on clinical cases. They presented their results in a live online session at the end of October 2025 and discussed them with Prof. Jäkel (Head of our division) and PD Dr. Harrabi (Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT)). As the elective module was very positively evaluated by the students, it will be offered again in 2026.

We are delighted that Dr. Christina Stengl has been awarded the 1st Behnken-Berger Prize 2025 by the Behnken-Berger Foundation. This award recognizes her scientific work on the preclinical use of mini-beam irradiation with carbon ions to improve the treatment of pancreatic cancer, which she completed as part of her dissertation in our division in the group “Medical Engineering” (headed by Armin Runz). The prize was awarded at the annual meeting of the German Society for Medical Physics (DGMP) in Berlin.

Congratulations!

Free registration for this year's Virtual International Day of Medical Physics 2025 at DKFZ (IDMP) on November 7, 2025 is now open. On this day, the Divisions of Medical Physics in Radiology (Head: Prof. Ladd) and Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology (Head: Prof. Jäkel) will host two online events via Zoom. Postdocs and doctoral students will report on their research work. The event will be held in English.

Further information is available here.

From 17 to 19 September 2025, the hybrid attendance phase of the Hybrid Summer Workshop in Medical Physics 2025 took place at the DKFZ in Heidelberg (course leaders: Dr. Vanessa Franke and Dr. Martin Niklas). 45 national and international participants were on site in Heidelberg. Another 50 people participated online via Zoom. Thanks to the participation of teachers from the DKFZ and external institutes (such as the Technical University of Munich and the University Hospital in Zurich), the workshop was a great success.

The workshop was jointly organised by the “Division of Medical Physics in Radiotherapy” (headed by Prof. Jäkel), the “Division of Medical Physics in Radiology” (headed by Prof. Ladd) and the “Division of Radiology” (headed by Prof. Schlemmer). 

More pictures of the hybrid attendance phase can be found on the workshop website.

Research does not always go exactly as planned but in surprise we can often peak into the hidden ways of nature. Finding beauty in unexpected outcomes was exactly the topic of the exhibition “The Art of Going Wrong” which accompanied the interdisciplinary symposium “Dancing with Right & Wrong”. The symposium, organized by the Young Marsilius Fellows in Heidelberg in July, explored “Right” and “Wrong” from an interdisciplinary point of view.

Our doctoral researcher, Karolin Milewski, received the award for the “Best Piece of Art” in the exhibition for her submission “Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART)”, which featured magnetic resonance images from an ongoing research project.

Congratulations!

Are you interested in the Federal Volunteer Service (BuFDI) and considering doing it at the German Cancer Research Center from September 1, 2025, to August 31, 2026? Our Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Therapy looks forward to hearing from you and receiving your application.

With us, you will gain exciting insights into the work of our division. This includes working with 3D printers, assisting with the design and development of medical models, and helping to organize and run scientific events and summer schools. You will also learn about the wide range of research topics we are currently working on.

Join our international team and get to know people from all over the world and their work.

If you have any further questions about your tasks in our division, please contact Wibke Johnen directly. She is the Deputy Head of the research group Medical Engineering of our division. 

You can find out how to apply on this website: https://www.dkfz.de/karriere/ausbildung/praktika/bundesfreiwilligendienst (in German). 

Registration for the “Hybrid Summer Workshop in Medical Physics 2025: Functional Imaging for Diagnostic and Therapy” is now open. The workshop is aimed at national and international students and postdocs from the fields of medical physics, radiation therapy, radiology, and related disciplines, and provides an overview of functional imaging and its use in diagnostics and therapy. The workshop is jointly organized by the Division of Medical Physics in Radiology (Head: Prof. Ladd), the Division of Radiology (Head: Prof. Schlemmer), and our division. The course will be led by Dr. Vanessa Franke and Dr. Martin Niklas.

More information is available on the course website. 
 

We are delighted that the project “InViMo for in-vivo particle therapy monitoring” has been selected as one of CERN's knowledge transfer highlights for 2024. The project was developed under the leadership of Dr. Mária Martišíková (head of the research group Novel Detection Techniques for Ion Beams in our division) in collaboration with the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) and Heidelberg University Hospital. A big thank you and congratulations to everyone involved in the project for this great achievement.

More information is available at https://report2024-kt.web.cern.ch/improving-head-tumour-radiotherapy/ oder in the paper.

Furthermore, you can watch a Podcast Interview with Dr. Mária Martišíková on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBKKzoqH5FI 

The research group Medical Engineering (led by Armin Runz) of our division took part in Girls' and Boys' Day, which was held on April 3, 2025, at the German Cancer Research Center. Schoolgirls from Heidelberg and the surrounding area visited us and learned how we produce 3D-printed organs for our research in radiotherapy. Other stops on this Girls' Day included the DKFZ IT Core Facility and the 7-Tesla MRI scanner in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiology (head: Prof. Mark Ladd). The boys participating in the Boys' Day visited the Press and Public Relations Department, the library, and the Central Animal Facility.

The registration for the Hybrid Courses in the Field of Particle Therapy opens on April 15th 2025. You can register until Sep. 29th 2025. The courses are aimed to physicians and Medical Physics Experts who want to gain the “Fachkunde Partikeltherapie”. Furthermore, national and international students and scientists are welcome to register as well. 

We are happy to offer free course participation to a limited number of participants. More information about the courses, the registration and the free course participation is available here. 

What exactly are we working on in the field of medical physics? What research questions are explored during a master's or doctoral thesis? What does a Postdoc actually research? And what does it look like in our office or laboratory? 

We try to answer these questions in our short video interviews. Click here to watch the videos with young researchers. 

We are very happy to announce our Hybrid Summer School in Medical Physics about Functional Imaging. The workshop is subdivided into an online phase of two to three weeks, followed by the hybrid attendance phase at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and on Zoom from September 17th to September 19th 2025. The course is designed for students (BSc, MSc, PhD or MD), postdocs as well as young scientists or clinical trainees. 

More information follows soon on the course website here. 

We would like to thank our invited speakers and our participants for such a nice matRad User Meeting and Hackathon. It was really a pleasure to welcome everyone from February 17 to 21 2025 in Heidelberg in our division at DKFZ. 

Congratulations to Remo Cristoforetti from DKFZ for receiving the Creativity Award and to Eric Christiansen from Canada for receiving the Coding Award. 

Click here for more information about the meeting. 

We are pleased to highlight the impact of Alexandra Walter’s research in the field of medical imaging. The achievements of her AI-based segmentation model for head and neck anatomy were published here at the beginning of 2024. In collaboration with Jakob Wasserthal and his team from the University Hospital Basel, the results of her work were made publicly accessible as part of the TotalSegmentator. User statistics show: By January 2025, over 135,000 CT images had been segmented using the head and neck model by more than 3,000 users — with the numbers continuing to rise.

This interdisciplinary starter project will explore visualization concepts and feasibility for a "digital patient twin" - a browser-based software tool that allows patients to access all essential information in radiation therapy, such as imaging data, therapeutic dose distributions and medical decisions. 

The exploratory short-term project, lead by Dr. Martin Niklas and Dr. Kristina Giske, is an example for the excellent integration of different disciplines of modern healthcare at DKFZ combining radiotherapy, radiology, clinical and computational medical physics, AI applications, as well as IT and software engineering aspects. 

More details are available on NCT page and on the website of the research group “Computational Patient Models”.

On January 15th 2025, our division is well represented at AIM (ArbeitsgruppenInspirationsMesse, organized by Fachschaft MathPhysInfo) by several research groups to physics and MINT students in Heidelberg. With us, students get a chance to dive into the fascinating world of medical physics and explore cutting-edge research topics shaping the future of healthcare. Our doctoral students and research group leaders are prepared to share insights, answer questions, and spark ideas for the future generation.

https://aim.mathphys.info/index.html#MED

Annika Schlechter, a master’s student of the research group “Novel Detection Techniques for Ion Beams” in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, was awarded the Christoph Schmelzer Prize of the Association for the Promotion of Tumor Therapy with Heavy Ions for her for her outstanding master thesis about “2.5D imaging: Accessing 3D information of a 2D ion-beam radiograph: Accessing 3D information of a 2D ion-beam radiograph)”.

Using an anthropomorphic phantom, Annika Schlechter was the first to experimentally demonstrate that information about the third dimension, i.e. about the depth of potential anatomical changes within the patient, can be extracted from a 2D ion-beam radiograph. She was able to convincingly verify that the accuracy of the depth determination can achieve clinical relevance.

More information about the ceremony is available here. 

From December 12 to 14, 2025, the “PCSM School in Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART)” took place in Bankok at our cooperation partner “Princess Srisavangavadhana College of Medicine, Chulabhorn Royal Academy (CRA)”. Prof. Jäkel (Head of our department) and Dr. Fabian Weykamp (Senior Physician of the Clinical Cooperation Unit Radiation Therapy) took part as invited speakers, together with Prof. Richter from OncoRay in Dresden.

The “PCSM School in Adaptive Radiation Therapy (ART)” is another visible component of our successful cooperation with Thailand. Further information on the PCSM School program can be found here.