Dr. Chris Beltran received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in Nuclear and Accelerator Physics. His thesis research was conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA. After completion of graduate school, Dr. Beltran accepted a medical physics fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Upon completion of the 3 year fellowship he accepted an Assistant Professor position at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. After 5 years in that position Dr. Beltran moved back to Mayo Clinic to aid in the Proton Therapy Center at Mayo Clinic.

Mayo Clinic is bringing online 2 spot scanning proton treatment facilities, one in Rochester Minnesota and the other in Phoenix Arizona. Each facility has 5 treatment rooms; 4 gantry rooms and one fixed beam room. This presentation will describe the proton facility and anticipated patient workflow. We will also introduce our research endeavours to address 4 critical shortcomings in spot scanning proton treatments. The first is the limitation in accuracy of traditional analytical dose calculations; second is the need for robust optimization; third is the uncertainty in proton stopping power determination; and lastly is the variation of the relative biological effectiveness of proton treatments with LET