The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recognized the recipients of its 2023 Gold Medal awards and other high-profile honors during an awards ceremony at the 65th ASTRO Annual Meeting in San Diego. Photos from the ceremony are available online.

ASTRO Gold Medal

Najeeb Mohideen, MD, FASTRO, Simon Powell, MD, PhD, FASTRO and Randall K. Ten Haken, PhD, FASTRO are the 2023 recipients of the ASTRO Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed upon an ASTRO member. ASTRO awards its Gold Medal annually to individuals who have made outstanding lifetime contributions in the field of radiation oncology, including achievements in clinical patient care, research, teaching and service to the profession. In the award’s 47th consecutive year, Drs. Mohideen, Powell and Ten Haken join an exclusive group of 96 Gold Medalists.

Dr. Najeeb Mohideen is a radiation oncologist at Northwest Community Hospital and a longstanding advocate for the radiation oncology specialty. Dr. Mohideen was named Senior Editor of ASTROnews, ASTRO’s member magazine, in 2016 and in this and other roles helped lead efforts to increase inclusiveness and equity in the specialty. He also led development of a program tailored to community-based physicians as part of ASTRO’s Annual Meeting, and he previously served on the ASTRO Board of Directors as Health Policy Council Chair. Dr. Mohideen was a radiation oncology advisor to the American Medical Association’s code development committee for a decade, where he was instrumental in helping develop health policy to support the widespread adoption of new radiation technologies. He also is current chairman of the Board of Directors at The Radiosurgery Society and a two-time recipient of the Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology (ARRO) Teacher of the Year award.

Dr. Simon Powell is a leading physician-scientist recognized internationally for his work in the genetics and molecular biology of DNA repair and the application of repair mechanisms to clinical radiation oncology. Dr. Powell chairs the department of radiation oncology and is an attending radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he specializes in treating patients with breast cancer and is principal investigator of an NCI Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant focused on genomic instability in breast cancer. In addition to his prolific research career developing innovations for patient care, Dr. Powell has a long history of mentorship, with many of his mentees now leading departments and programs. He also helped modernize board certification exams for radiation oncology through his role on the radiation biology section of the American Board of Radiology and is an active member of the ASTROnews Editorial Board.

Dr. Randall Ten Haken is a renowned medical physicist whose research has improved the delivery of radiation therapy for a wide range of patients. He was a key member of the University of Michigan team that introduced three-dimensional treatment planning for radiation therapy into clinical practice, allowing treatment plans to adapt to patient motion and other uncertainties during treatment. His contributions also include groundbreaking developments in dose escalation for conformal radiation therapy, with a focus on liver and lung tumors. These innovations led the field toward a more individualized, patient-centered approach to escalated radiation dosing and laid the groundwork for additional, practice-changing trials. Dr. Ten Haken previous served on ASTRO’s Board of Directors as Chair of its Science Council, and he was awarded a William D. Coolidge Gold Medal by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the society’s top honor, in 2020.

Read more about Dr. Mohideen, Dr. Powell and Dr. Ten Haken in ASTROnews.

ASTRO Honorary Member

Oliver Sartor, MD, Director of Radiopharmaceutical Trials at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is the 2023 ASTRO Honorary Member. Dr. Sartor is known for his outstanding contributions to the development of new therapies for prostate cancer, especially through his leadership of practice-changing radiopharmaceutical clinical trials. This award is the highest honor ASTRO bestows upon oncologic physicians and researchers in disciplines outside of radiation oncology, radiobiology and medical physics.

Read more about Dr. Sartor in ASTROnews.

ASTRO Mentorship Award

Paul Harari, MD, FASTRO, Fei-Fei Liu, MD, FASTRO, and Phuoc Tran, MD, PhD, are the recipients of the 2023 ASTRO Mentorship Awards. This honor recognizes role models in radiation oncology who have excelled as mentors through outstanding commitment to developing their mentees as clinicians, educators and researchers.

Read more about Dr. Harari, Dr. Liu and Dr. Tran in ASTROnews.

Annual Meeting Abstract Awards

Thirty-four researchers received 2023 ASTRO Annual Meeting Abstract Awards, which recognize the highest-rated research presented at the meeting and focus on highlighting the work of residents and early career professionals.

Vinai Gondi, MD, and Bradford Hoppe, MD, MPH, FASTRO, received the Steven A. Leibel Memorial Award, an award given jointly by ASTRO and the American Board of Radiology (ABR) Foundation that recognizes the contributions of principal investigators in the first decade of their careers following board certification in radiation oncology.

A full list of the 2023 award recipients is available online, and details about their abstracts and presentations are available in the Annual Meeting portal.

Survivor Circle: Honoring Patients and Their Contributions

In addition to awarding achievements in the fight against cancer made by oncology investigators, ASTRO recognizes contributions from patient support organizations through its Survivor Circle Grant program. This year, ASTRO awarded grants to two organizations that provide cancer support services in Southern California: Breast Cancer Angels and the Cancer Support Community of Los Angeles.

Read more about ASTRO's Survivor Circle program and these organizations at RTAnswers, and read an update from last year’s Survivor Circle recipients on the ASTRO Blog.

ASTRO Research Grants and Fellowships

Several ASTRO funding opportunities support early-career researchers in radiation oncology. In 2023, nine scholars received research grants, including seed grants and career development awards co-sponsored by the American Cancer Society, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, American Association of Physicists in Medicine, NRG Oncology, Melanoma Research Alliance and LUNGevity Foundation. Additionally, four scholars were selected for radiation oncology research training fellowships with industry partners AstraZeneca, Nanobiotix and Varian Medical Systems. See the full list of ASTRO research grant and fellowship recipients here.

Ten outstanding medical students were selected earlier this year for ASTRO Medical Student Fellowship Awards. ASTRO launched this award to introduce medical students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine to the discipline of radiation oncology early in their medical education. Read more about the Medical Summer Fellowship awardees and their projects here.

ABOUT ASTRO

The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with nearly 10,000 members who are physicians, nurses, biologists, physicists, radiation therapists, dosimetrists and other health care professionals who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. Radiation therapy contributes to 40% of global cancer cures, and more than a million Americans receive radiation treatments for cancer each year. For information on radiation therapy, visit RTAnswers.org. To learn more about ASTRO, visit our website and media center and follow us on social media.