News - German Cancer Research Center

IDMP 2025: Register now

This year's Virtual International Day of Medical Physics at DKFZ (IDMP) will take place on November 7, 2025. 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.

Free registration is now open. Further information is available here.

Successful Hybrid Summer Workshop 2025

From 17 to 19 September 2025, the 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.

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

Current Publications

Quantitative abdominal sodium MRI combined with 32-channel proton pTx MRI at 7 Tesla in a large field-of-view

Scheipers AK, Grimm JA, Losch J, Orzada S, Fiedler TM, Nagel AM, Schmitter S, Ladd ME, Platt T

Magn Reson Med. 2025 Jun 22

DOI: 10.1002/mrm.30605

Human liver CEST imaging at 7 T: Impact of B+1 shimming

Bulanov P, Menshchikov P, Grimm JA, Lutz M, Orzada S, Boyd PS, Bachert P, Ladd ME, Korzowski A, Schmitter S

Magn Reson Med. 2025 May 24

DOI: 10.1002/mrm.30557

Positive susceptibility-based contrast imaging with dephased balanced steady-state free precession

Faust JF, Speier P, Krafft AJ, Patil S, Seethamraju RT, Ladd ME, Maier F

Magn Reson Med. 2025 Jul;94(1):59-72

doi: 10.1002/mrm.30421

Hybrid Sommer Workshop 2025

An image showcasing different medical imaging techniques, including CT, DWI, PET, and ADC, presented in four quadrants. The text at the bottom announces the "Hybrid Summer Workshop 2025: Functional Imaging for Diagnostic and Therapy" organized by the German Cancer Research Center.

The course “Hybrid Summer Workshop in Medical Physics 2025: Functional Imaging for Diagnostic and Therapy” will take place this summer. 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 Radiation Oncology (Head: Prof. Jäkel), 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.

Girls' and Boys' Day in our division

A group of children wearing lab coats observe a presentation at a computer. A woman, presumably an instructor, explains something while the children attentively watch the screen. The environment appears to be a medical or scientific setting. — Students at the 7 Tesla working group in our department.

Our department (Head: Prof. Dr. Mark E. Ladd) took part in the Girls’ and Boys’ Day, which took place on April 3, 2025 at the German Cancer Research Center. Schoolgirls from Heidelberg and the surrounding area visited us and learned how to generate cross-sectional images, here of a fruit salad, using magnetic resonance imaging on our 7 Tesla MR scanner. Other stations of this Girls' Day were the IT Core Facility of the DKFZ and the Medical Technology working group of the Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Therapy (Head: Prof. Dr. Oliver Jäkel). The Boys' Day students visited the Press and Public Relations Department, the Library and the Central Animal Ward.

Awarding the Glocker Medal

Presentation of the Glocker Medal to Mark E. Ladd (right) by Martin Fiebich, President of DGMP (left).

Prof. Mark E. Ladd was awarded the Glocker Medal 2024 by the German Society for Medical Physics (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Physik - DGMP) in recognition of his outstanding scientific contributions in the field of medical MRI imaging. The laudatory speech was held by Prof. Frederik Laun, who praised Prof. Mark E. Ladd's groundbreaking research work and his long-term commitment to medical physics.

Prof. Mark E. Ladd is currently working on the development of a 14 Tesla MRI scanner that will set new standards in medical imaging. The award of the Glocker Medal recognizes his outstanding scientific work and continuous innovation in the field of MRI.

Interview with Dr. Vanessa Franke

In the interview series “Interviews in Medical Physics”, insights are given into the work in medical physics at the DKFZ and some research fields are explained briefly and comprehensibly. Dr. Vanessa Franke is a postdoc in the Department of Medical Physics in Radiology (Head: Prof. Dr. Mark Ladd). She works in the NMR Spectroscopy and CEST Imaging group (Head: Dr. Andreas Korzowski) on a new technique called Phosphorus Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging, or 31P-MRSI for short, which can be used to visualize additional biochemical parameters. The interview can be viewed here.

Open Positions

Text promoting PhD positions in Medical Physics and Radiopharmaceutical Sciences at the German Cancer Research Center. It highlights research areas, including diagnostics and therapy, imaging techniques, and developing radiopharmaceuticals. Application deadlines are January 5th and May 31st. Visit www.dkfz.de/phd for more information.

Bachelor and Master theses, Internships

Our department is regularly looking for motivated candidates for Bachelor's and Master's theses.

A description of the fields of work and possible projects can be found on the pages of the research and project groups.

Information on open Bachelor's, Master's or internship positions can be found here.

Open Positions

You can find the DKFZ's job vacancies at https://www.dkfz.de/en/career/jobs.

DKFZ PhD program

Information about the PhD program of the DKFZ can be found at https://www.dkfz.de/en/career/international-phd-program.