Prof Christian Graeff awarded European Research Council Grant
Professor Christian Graeff, a distinguished member of the OMA network at GSI, has been awarded the highly sought-after Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
The prestigious research funding award supports a project to improve tumor therapy with a funding sum in the millions. Christian Graeff will lead this research project as principal investigator and conduct it with a corresponding team. The renowned prize also underlines the outstanding quality of scientific research at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and the future accelerator center FAIR.
Professor Christian Graeff is deputy head of the Biophysics Department, head of the Medical Physics group at GSI Biophysics and professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (ETIT) at TU Darmstadt. In his new project entitled “Portal Range Monitoring in Mixed Ion Beam Surgery” (PROMISE), Christian Graeff aims to further develop the process of tumor therapy with charged particles.
The idea is to employ a combined beam for both medical treatment and imaging purposes during treatment. PROMISE will produce for the first time mixed ion beams that enable concurrent treatment and image guidance. Carbon ions deliver the dose to the target while Helium ions, simultaneously accelerated to the same velocity, traverse the patient and monitor tumour location and beam range. PROMISE could realize an imaging that provides real-time information on the target anatomy as seen by the treatment beam. Coupled with innovative detectors, AI-based image recognition, and online dose reconstruction, this technique could enable to drastically reduce safety margins, and achieve the full potential of CIRT.
Professor Christian Graeff said: “I would like to thank the European Research Council for giving me this great opportunity through the ERC Consolidator Grant. I am looking forward to fulfilling PROMISE together with my team and the renowned experts of the GSI accelerator department“.
(Article adapted from https://www.gsi.de/en/start/news/details/2023/11/23/erc-grant-fuer-professor-christian-graeff)