Maan Najem

My professional goal is to use my physics skills to improve cancer treatment and to help patients to have a better quality of life.

My number one motivating factor in my work is my passion for finding ways to help cancer patients get better. I love being involved in solving complicated problems, such as those in radiotherapy physics. This passion keeps motivating me to learn new skills such as new computing skills, accomplish further education, and attend different courses, lectures and workshops.

I am firmly committed to high-quality, interdisciplinary and applied academic research leading to publication and to improving my clinical skills. I will continue to endeavour to conduct research and to improve my clinical skills that will have an impact on cancer patients and the wider society.

I am a very open-minded person that is motivated, dynamic and able to use my own initiative.

I have learnt practical radiotherapy physics skills by working at both sites of the Royal Marsden Hospital. In addition, the experience in the hospital environment has taught me how to deal with patients’ personal information, reinforced my communication and teamwork with colleagues and the personal and professional skills necessary for a clinical radiotherapy physicist. I have supported my theoretical knowledge by attending the Radiotherapy course at Royal Marsden Hospital in November 2011, March 2012 and November 2014.

During my training at the Sutton site, I developed skills in treatment planning and quality assurance of the treatment machines. I assisted in the commissioning of a new Elekta Agility head and specifically with checking the beam data (beam profiles and percentage depth doses) entered into the Pinnacle treatment planning system and the independent checking program (RadCalc).

At the Chelsea site, I have been:

• Performing (planning and checking) conformal and complex external treatment plans (i.e. IMRT, VMAT, SBRT for all treatment sites using Eclipse TPS.
• Performing Brain SRS and extra-cranial CyberKnife plans using Precision TPS.
• Performing (planning and checking) HDR Gynae brachy plans using Oncentra TPS.
• Performing LDR prostate implants.
• Leading routine QA and performing patient-specific QA.
• Developing a web-based in-vivo EPID dosimetry software. I published a paper about the model behind it 
• Introducing new QA EPID-based tests such as radiation field sizes and Leaf-speed tests.

In addition, I assisted with the commissioning of Varian TrueBeam linacs and a CyberKnife (post waveguide replacement) by helping with the water tank verification measurements, checking the beam data match existing beam models, performing end-to-end tests, commissioning the 4DCBCT mode for the XI imager that is equipped on the TrueBeam linac and acquiring the commissioning data for our in-house transit EPID dosimetry software (IVED). I assisted in the commissioning of the 4DCT mode of a Siemens Confidence CT scanner. I was also responsible for preparing and performing IMRT and VMAT verification and Radiation survey for one of the TrueBeam linac. In addition, I was responsible for commissioning a Multi-Mets Winston Lutz (MMWL) phantom which is used to verify the targeting accuracy of multiple metastases stereotactic brain radiosurgery.

I have been attending various conferences, courses and workshops to keep my knowledge and skills up to date and demonstrated the technical and practical aspects of EPID QA during the practical sessions of the Radiotherapy Physics course that runs annually at the Royal Marsden Hospital. I have been also assessing and helping new Trainees with essential planning, QA and radiation protection.

The department used my good computing skills to create several QATrack+ (a free machine QC database for Radiation Therapy & Diagnostic Imaging Clinics) test lists and develop several programs such as:

• Software to analyse radiation mechanical isocentre coincidence EPID images.
• A macro to auto-populate HDR Gynae plan DVH data from Oncentra TPS into the plan assessment form.
• Software to perform 1D Gamma evaluation for PDD and beam profiles that are acquired using PTW MEPHYSTO Water tank software.
• A macro to find the offset between the position of the centre of gravity of a given isodose level to the centre of the dose plane image which was used during BrainLab Elements TPS commissioning.
• A macro to read PDF files generated by RadCalc for multi-Mets plans and calculate the minimum dose (i.e. MUs) difference between TPS and RadCalc for each beam of the treatment.

I am currently working towards becoming a Medical Physicist Expert (MPE) and I submitted my MPE portfolio in August 2022 to attain my MPE certification.

I have completed a PhD in Medical Physics at the University of Surrey, UK. The research aimed to study the effect of removing the flattening filter from the head of linear accelerators on beam characteristics and treatment outcomes using Monte Carlo Simulation with emphasis on photoneutron production. The use of Monte Carlo techniques and immersing myself in the literature during my PhD, allowed me to gain a solid understanding of the physics of radiotherapy. I published several papers related to the physics aspects of external radiotherapy physics. I am confident I have a good foundation in the theory of radiation and medical physics. In addition, I participated in several national and international conferences and presented my work either orally or as a poster.

During my PhD studies, I learned how to carry out research and I grew in my understanding of problem-solving. Throughout my PhD, I have had to be self-motivated and organised to complete my PhD within the allotted time. I have adapted to deal with pressing deadlines, unsuccessful simulations and/or experiments. I never feel overwhelmed by challenges. Every challenge I face, I see as an opportunity to learn something new and add depth to my pre-existing knowledge. In addition, I co-supervised two MSc Medical Physics students during their MSc projects and demonstrated to postgraduate and undergraduate students in radiation and mechanical labs.

To keep developing new skills and knowledge, I have registered with the ‘Coursera’ website and attended online courses in different subjects such as “learning how to learn”, “Algorithms”, “Fundamentals of Digital Image and Video Processing”, “Python Data Structures”, “High-Performance Scientific Computing” and “Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp 1”, "Introduction to Software Testing" and "Applied Machine Learning in Python".