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Letter from Director Samei

Ehsan Samei takes over as the new director of our program today. He sent the following message to all members of the program:

Our Journey Ahead

Dear Duke Medical Physics students, faculty, alumni, and friends,

Ten years out from its inception, the Duke Medical Physics Graduate Program has become one of the leading national institutions of Medical Physics. Within that decade, the Program has enabled an extension of Duke’s presence in the field through educating the next generation of medical physicists, who will exemplify and improve upon the Duke legacy. These first ten years of the Program have been remarkable, begetting 150 graduates, and hundreds of publications, to cite just two measures of its impact. This is a solid foundation upon which the next phase of our Program should be built.

We owe our deep gratitude to our outgoing director, James Dobbins, for the dedicated leadership that brought the program to its current state. Jim has exemplified for us how to lead with brains and with heart, not compromising one for the other. His example provides a lasting legacy for each one of us, and particularly for me, both now and on the road ahead.

The road ahead is a formidable one. The culture of healthcare is changing in substantial ways that force us to rethink and revision how medical physics can be most effective in its role in patient care and innovation in medicine.  But medical physics continues to maintain the foundations of key clinical disciplines. And as we have done in the past, we now have an even greater opportunity to serve as scientific agents of value, precision, and innovation in medicine, all of which are in high demand in the current healthcare economy. Building upon these core values, our Duke Medical Physics enterprise has the opportunity to set the standard for how medical physics can be most effectively developed, practiced, and taught, to the benefit of our patients.

This task is not one that can be safely delegated to a “program.” It requires effort on the part of all of us. Our program is a collection of individuals, each of you, who actually have the opportunity to set the standard in the way you do medical physics. The program provides a home for the talent and dedication of the individuals who make up that home.  We will succeed to the extent that we each, individually, contribute our best.

I feel extremely privileged to partner with you in our collective push towards the next manifestation of excellence. We have a bright future ahead of us, and as great as the last ten years has been, I am confident that the best is yet to come!

Yours truly,

Ehsan Samei
Director, Medical Physics Graduate Program