I’m currently a Ph.D. student in Medical Physics at Duke University School of Medicine. I am working under the guidance of Professor Fang-Fang Yin, Ph.D. at the Department of Radiation Oncology.
On June 25th, 1986, I was born in Santiago, the capital and largest city of Chile, surrounded by the Andes Mountains. In this place, I have lived with my family all my life. During my high school years, I developed a strong passion for physics and mathematics. After high school, I studied two undergraduate programs at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile: the first in Natural Science and Mathematics with a major in Economics and the second one in Physics, graduating in December 2012 and January 2013. For the Physics program, I developed a thesis entitled “Monte Carlo simulation: X-ray tube for cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT)” under the supervision of prof. Dr. Beatriz Sánchez and prof. Dr. Edgardo Dörner. This research aimed to estimate the probability of generating secondary cancer due to the use of a CBCT.
The potential applications of my undergraduate thesis project led me to pursue a dual Master’s degree program in Medical Physics offered by the Medical Faculty at Universität Heidelberg and the Faculty of Physics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Due to the involvement of commercial enterprises and high safety requirements in medical applications, radiotherapy treatment planning systems (TPS) usually have a closed architecture and inaccessible source code. This compromises both the broad availability of radiation treatment planning software for educational purposes and the flexibility regarding custom developments in an academic setting; for that reason, I was awarded the Baden-Württemberg Scholarship to develop my Master thesis in the optimization algorithm group at the Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), located in Heidelberg, Germany to developed an open-source treatment planning system. I obtained my M.Sc. in 2015, with a thesis entitled “Development and application of matRad: a multi-modality open-source 3D treatment planning system” under the supervision of Dr. Mark Bangert. matRad is the first open-source Treatment Planning System capable of working in three different modalities using the same code: photon, proton, and carbon ion therapy.
During my spare time, I enjoy relaxing and going out with family and friends. I also enjoy cooking, listening to music, and keeping up with current affairs. Furthermore, I am interested in hiking and trekking and have visited several mountains in the Andes.
