Title:  “You CAN Take It With You:  Nuclear Engineering Careers in Healthcare”

Abstract: 

Healthcare offers career opportunities for nuclear engineers in many different roles and settings.  From startup companies to academic medical centers, nuclear engineers work in key roles in medical physics, health physics, medical device and equipment development, biotechnology and biomedical research, and government and regulatory affairs.  These opportunities are often not as well-known to students as traditional nuclear engineering career paths.  A nuclear engineering education provides a foundation of basic analytical and quantitative skills along with technical knowledge in important areas like radiation physics, giving nuclear engineering graduates a unique opportunity to be valuable contributors in healthcare fields. This seminar will present the healthcare career paths that are available to nuclear engineers.  The common duties in these fields will be discussed, as well as the relationship between these roles and the common domains of nuclear engineering training.  An overview of the professional certification pathways for medical physics and health physics will also be provided.

Bio:

David W. Jordan is Senior Medical Physicist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center (UHCMC) and Assistant Professor of Radiology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.  He is the program director of the medical physics residency program in diagnostic imaging and nuclear medicine at UHCMC. He completed his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Michigan. He has been a medical physicist since 2004 and has trained more than a dozen clinical medical physicists.  He is an expert in quality control and optimization of medical imaging equipment, including nuclear medicine, and has a special interest in magnetic resonance imaging.  He is an active member of several professional and scientific committees of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).