Student Achievements

MSMP Program Scholarships

The Master of Science in Medical Physics (MSMP) Program Scholarships are three merit-based scholarships of $40,000 and one financial need-based scholarship of $30,000 annually to support incoming students who enroll full-time in our MSMP program.

2025 Awardees: Vishvi Aurora, Nathan Campos, Eleonora Julmy, and Anran Zhao

2024 Awardees: Nehemyah Green, Jana Shade, and Jack Shaw

2023 Awardee:  Alejandro Garcia

American Association of Physicists in Medicine / Radiological Society of North America (AAPM/RSNA) Fellowship Awards

The AAPM/RSNA Fellowship is a $10,000 award to be used toward a student's tuition or professional or research development.  

• Xiaokun Teng, PhD, MS Student: AAPM/RSNA Master's Graduate Fellowship
• Bolin Li, MS '24: AAPM/RSNA Master's Graduate Fellowship
• Mario Gallardo, MS '24: AAPM/RSNA Master's Graduate Fellowship
• Elissa Khoudary, MS '24:  AAPM/RSNA Master's Graduate Fellowship
• Lian Duan, MS '23:  AAPM/RSNA Doctoral Fellowship Award to pursue his PhD at MD Anderson
• Dixin Chen, MS '23

AAPM Delaware Valley Chapter (DVC) MedPhys Slam 

Xiaokun Teng, PhD, MS student, won first place in the MedPhys Slam competition at the DVC-AAPM Spring Symposium with her presentation, We Used a Stack of Metal Plates to Catch Protons - and Make Cancer Therapy Safer.” She represented the Delaware Valley Chapter in the national competition at the 2025 AAPM Annual Meeting.  

Bolin Li, MS '24, won first place  in the MedPhys Slam competition at the DVC-AAPM Spring Symposium with his presentation, "AI Agents in Medicine: Extract, Reason and Summarize." He represented the Delaware Valley Chapter in the national competition at the 2024 AAPM Annual Meeting.  

AAPM Delaware Valley Chapter Young Investigator Symposium 

2025 Winners:

Muskan Lather, MS '25, placed first and MSMP student Xiaokun Teng, PhD placed third. 

2024 Winner: 

Christopher Tyerech, MS '24, won second place with his presentation, "Reproducibility of Perfusion Blood Volume and Ventilation Imaging for Lung Function Assessment." 

2023 Winners

Mario Gallardo, MS '24, tied for first place with his presentation, "A Method to Evaluate Cumulative Dose on TSET patients on Patient Finite-Element Models using Cherenkov Imaging."

Jiayi Liu, MS '23, tied for second place with her presentation, "Using Thin-Gap Transmission Ion Chamber and Faraday Cup to Characterize Ion Recombination Effect under UHDR Electron, Pulsed Proton and Quasi-Continuous Protons Beams." 

Hai Siong Tan, PhD, Certificate '24, tied for second place with his presentation, "Modeling Electron and Proton FLASH with the Physiochemical Approach." 

Department of Radiation Oncology Chair's Summer Research Grant

The Chair's Summer Research Grant is a $4,000 award for students to complete a research project over the summer.  Award recipients are required to submit a manuscript for publication.  

2025 Awardees

• Xiaokun Teng, PhD, MSMP Student
• Ledi Wang, MSMP Student

2024 Awardees

• Alexander Choi, MS '25
• Muskan Lather, MS '25
• Krista White, MS '25
• Christopher Tyerech, MS '24

2023 Awardees

• Andrew Friberg, Bioengineering PhD - Medical Physics Concentration student
• Grace Chang, MS '24
• Bolin Li, MS '24
• Ellen Park, MS '24
• Hai Siong Tan, PhD, Certificate' 24
• Weibing Yang, PhD, Certificate '24

National Science Fellowship (NSF) Award

Andrew Friberg, PhD in Bioengineering-Medical Physics Concentration student, received an NSF-sponsored fellowship to attend the 20th International Summer School on Bio Complexity in Crete, Greece in June 2023. 

Radiosurgery Society (RSS) Member-in-Training Award

Dixin Chen, MS '23, was awarded the 2023 Radiosurgery Society (RSS) Member-in-Training Award. Recipients of this award receive a $1,000 prize, complimentary RSS membership for one year, and complimentary meeting registration. Dixin presented her abstract, "Revisiting Multi-leaf Collimator Leaf Width and Single-isocenter Multi-target Radiosurgery Plan Quality Using Latest Automated Dynamic Conformal and Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy Planning Solutions" at the 2023 RSS Scientific Meeting in Orlando, FL.

AAPM Best Award

Lian Duan, MS '23, was awarded the AAPM Best Award. This Travel Fellowship is for a student, resident, or junior member of AAPM to attend the AAPM Annual Meeting.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Marie Curie Fellowship

The IAEA Marie Curie Fellowship provides scholarships for tuition and living expenses to selected female students studying toward a master's degree in nuclear-related subjects.

• Ila Farhang, MS '24 
• Odalis Reyes, MS '23

Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Cloud (C4) Cancer Research Education Excellence in Radiotherapy (CaREER) program

Lyna Dinh and Muskan Lather, MSMP students, were selected to participate in the Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Cloud (C4) Cancer Research Education Excellence in Radiotherapy (CaREER) program in Summer 2024. Muskan and Lyna worked with mentors at Johns Hopkins University on projects related to global health and radiation therapy.

Goldwater Scholarship

Nayoon Lee, MSMP submatriculation student, was awarded the 2025 Goldwater Scholarship.  The Goldwater Scholarships are awarded by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship & Excellence in Education Foundation to undergraduate students planning careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering. Link to Penn Today article: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/five-penn-third-year-students-are-2025-goldwater-scholars

University of Pennsylvania Graduate Leadership Award

Mario Gallardo, MS '24 was awarded the President & Provost’s Honor for Developing New Initiatives in Graduate & Professional Student Life. This award is presented to a student who has initiated lasting new developments that enhanced graduate and professional student life at Penn. Mario received this award in recognition of his efforts to establish institutions for student representation at the school and University-level and to foster greater engagement and community for master’s students within the Perelman School of Medicine.

MPGP Representation in Graduate Student Life at Penn: Biomedical Graduate Student Association (BGSA)

Mario Gallardo, MS '24, was appointed to the role of Vice Chair of Master's and Certificate Programs (MaC) Student Affairs within the PSOM BGSA. In this position, he worked with the Chair to represent MaC students to the University and served as acting Chair if the Chair was absent. 

Elissa Khoudary, MS '24, was appointed to Vice Chair of Operations within the PSOM BGSA.  In this position, she recorded the minutes of all BGSA executive board and general assembly meetings, reported announcements to BGS students, and assumed responsibility for maintaining the BGSA website. 

MPGP Representation in Graduate Student Life at Penn:  Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GAPSA)

GAPSA advocates for student needs to the Board of Trustees; plans university wide social events; funds student-led organizations; and organizes grants for professional and research-related travel and academic expenses. 

Muskan Lather, MSMP student, was appointed a Biomedical Graduate Student Association (BGSA) representative to GAPSA.  In her role, she represents and advocates for the BGSA at GAPSA meetings. 

Grace Chang, MS '24, was appointed to Deputy Director of Operations for Records on the GAPSA Executive Board. 

Andrew Friberg, PhD in Bioengineering - Medical Physics Concentration student, was published in the Radiotherapy & Oncology ESTRO Supplement with his paper, “4232 Physicochemical Indication of the FLASH Effect from Shoot-through Proton Pencil Beam Scanning Parameters Delivered under Ultra-high Dose Rates." Link to PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40730207/

Bolin Li, MS '24, was published in the following journals:

• Current Protocols with his paper titled, "Spatial Single Cell Analysis of Proteins in 2D Human Gastruloids Using Iterative Immunofluorescence." Link to DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cpz1.915
• International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics with his paper titled, "Patterns of Failure, Low-Volume Relapse, and Subsequent Ablative Management in Locally Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Definitive Chemoradiation and Consolidation Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors." Link to DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.10.005
• International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics with his paper titled, "Pneumonitis Rates Before and After Adoption of Immunotherapy Consolidation in Patients With Locally Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Concurrent Chemoradiation. Link to DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.08.039

Weibing Yang, PhD, Certificate '24 and Madelyn Johnson, MS '25, were published in the following SPIE Proceedings:

• Proc. SPIE 12823 Optical Methods for Tumor Treatment and Detection:  Mechanisms and Techniques in Photodynamic Therapy XXXII with their article, "Tissue optical properties correction of multispectral singlet oxygen luminescent dosimetry (MSOLD) for Photofrin-mediated photodynamic therapy." Link to DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3003076
• Proc. SPIE 12823 Optical Methods for Tumor Treatment and Detection:  Mechanisms and Techniques in Photodynamic Therapy XXXII with their article, "A comparison of multichannel singlet oxygen luminescence dosimetry (MSOLD) and singlet oxygen explicit dosimetry (SOED)." Link to DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3003421
• Proc. SPIE 12826 Mechanisms of Photobiomodulation Therapy XVIII with their article, "Red and near-infrared light dosimetry: a comprehensive analysis of tissue optical properties." Link to DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3005238

Weibing Yang, PhD, Certificate '24, Madelyn Johnson, MS '25, and Baozhu Lu, PhD, Certificate student, were published in Antioxidants with their paper titled, "Correction of Multispectral Singlet Oxygen Luminescent Dosimetry (MSOLD) for Tissue Optical Properties in Photofrin-Mediated Photodynamic Therapy." Link to DOI: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3921/13/12/1458 

Hai Siong Tan, PhD, Certificate '24 was published in the following journals:

• Computers in Biology and Medicine with his paper titled, "Exploring UMAP in hybrid models of entropy-based and representativeness sampling for active learning in biomedical segmentation."  Link to PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38772054/ 
• Computers in Biology and Medicine with his paper titled, "Deep Evidential Learning for Radiotherapy Dose Prediction."  Link to PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39317056/

Ryan Kim, MS ’23, was published in Frontiers Oncology with his paper titled, “A Phenomenological Model of Proton FLASH Oxygen Depletion Effects Depending on Tissue Vasculature and Oxygen Supply”. Link to PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36518319/

Ahmad Sakaamini, PhD, Certificate ‘23, was published in Physics in Medicine & Biology with his paper titled, “An AI-based Universal Phantom Analysis Method Based on XML-SVG Wireframes with Novel Functional Object Identifiers”. Link to PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37267994/  

Weibing Yang, PhD, Certificate '24, was published in SPIE Proceedings 12359 with his paper titled, “Multispectral singlet oxygen luminescent dosimetry (MSOLD) for Photofrin-mediated Photodynamic Therapy." Link to DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2652590