Ewa’s secondment at PSI
A new material has been proposed for the proton beam energy degrader currently used in the PROSCAN beamline in the Center for Proton Therapy at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland. Our fellow, Ewa Oponowicz, based at the University of Manchester, performed simulations of the new degrader during her secondment at PSI.
Ewa spent a couple of months at the end of 2017 working on the performance of the proposed degrader update. The simulations were done mostly in OPAL, a tool developed at PSI, and FLUKA. This was a great research project, which, in the next steps of her work, will help Ewa to perform beam tracking studies for the superconducting gantry. Additionally, this secondment provided an opportunity to visit one of the leading proton therapy facilities in Europe and network with other researchers in the field.
Ewa is back in the UK, where she continues work on the project and will compare the obtained results with G4Beamline simulations. All the simulations will be then benchmarked with measurements by the end of March 2018 when the new degrader will be installed for testing in the PROSCAN beamline.