The Bacq and Alexander Award

Carine Bio

Gabriel Pantelias holds a BSc in Physics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, an MSc in Radiobiology and Health Physics, and a PhD in Radiobiology and Biophysics from the University of Rochester, School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester NY, USA. He worked as Postdoctoral Research Radiobiologist at the Laboratory of Radiobiology and Environmental Health, University of California San Francisco, USA, and as Assistant Professor at the Department of Radiation Oncology and Nuclear Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, PA, USA. In 1986 he was employed by the National Research Centre for Scientific Research (NCSR) “Demokritos”, Athens, Greece. For his education and in recognition of his scientific achievements, he has been awarded several scholarships, fellowships, honorary prizes and distinctions.
Gabriel has been Director of the Institute of Radioisotopes & Radiodiagnostic Products, as well as of the Institute of Nuclear & Radiological Sciences and Technology, Energy & Safety at the NCSR “Demokritos”. He has also served as Vice President of this Research Centre for several years and, since January 2018, he is a Board Member of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission.
Gabriel is a Radiological Sciences Expert who has been appointed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to undertake various international missions for educational, research and development purposes in the fields of radiobiology, biological dosimetry, radiation protection and safe use of radioactive sources. He has also been recognized by the Greek Atomic Energy Commission as a Qualified Radiation Protection Programme Expert. He has represented for many years NCSR "Demokritos" in the Coordinating Committee of the Inter-University Post-Graduate Course in Medical Radiation Physics, in charge of the coordination of the Radiation Biology postgraduate courses.
He has served as a Board Member of the European Radiation Research Society (2011-2017) and has been a reviewer in many international scientific journals. He has been actively involved as Principal Investigator in many European and national research projects. For his research activities at NCSR “Demokritos”, he has been awarded considerable funding.
Gabriel has carried out pioneering work in the field of radiobiological sciences and radiation cytogenetics. In particular, he has developed a powerful cytogenetic tool, the premature chromosome condensation (PCC) assay using Go-blood lymphocytes for biological dosimetry, as well as a standardized G2-assay for the prediction of individual radiosensitivity. These tools are important for risk assessment following accidental exposure to ionizing radiation. Moreover, he has implemented radiation cytogenetics and the PCC-assay to explore the mechanisms involved in radiation-induced chromosomal aberrations and carcinogenesis. His research interests include the analysis of chromosome breakage, repair, and rearrangement, the mechanisms that underlie the conversion of DNA damage into visual chromatid breaks, the formation of chromosomal aberrations following radiation exposure at various cell cycle stages, the investigation of the effects of different radiation qualities, as well as non-targeted radiation effects and genomic instability. His recent work is focused on the use of premature chromosome condensation to mechanistically unravel the origin of chromothripsis and radiation-induced carcinogenesis, as well as to identify specific fingerprints of exposure to particle radiation and elucidate the mechanistic origin of chromothripsis-like alterations induced by high-LET irradiation.

Kevin Prise is Professor of Radiation Biology and Deputy Director at the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen’s University Belfast, where he has been since 2007. Prior to this he was Head of the Cell and Molecular Radiation Biology Group at the Gray Cancer Institute in Northwood, London. A Biochemistry graduate of Aberdeen University, he received his PhD in Cell Biology and Biochemistry, from the University of Aberdeen, on the mechanisms of action of the chemotherapeutic methotrexate. He joined the Gray Laboratory in 1985 working with Barry Michael, Melvyn Folkard and Boris Vojnovic, under the directorships of Jack Fowler, Julie Denekamp and Ged Adams. He has developed wide-ranging interests in radiation biology including research on low dose radiation risk, radiation quality, cell and tissue signalling mechanisms. He has played a major role in the application of microbeam technologies for delineating the response of cells to targeted single tracks of radiation. His recent work, at Queen’s has involved the development of an Advanced Radiotherapy Group integrating Radiation Oncology, under the leadership of Joe O’Sullivan, and Clinical Radiotherapy Physics, under the leadership of Alan Hounsell, with translational radiation biology.  Together they are developing new biological based models for optimising advanced radiotherapies such as Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy and particle therapies. A current focus is the application of radionuclide approaches in advanced prostate cancer. He is currently President of the US Radiation Research Society, a previous RRS Michael Fry award recipient and Friedrich Dessauer Awardee of the German Radiation Research Societies. He is the 2018 Douglas Lea Lecturer, awarded by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. He serves on the UK Government Expert Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE), is Editor in Chief (Scientific) of the British Journal of Radiology, an honorary member of the Royal College of Radiologists and has published over 290 papers (h=51).

George Iliakis is Professor and Director of the Institute of Medical Radiation Biology at the Medical School of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. The focus of his research activities is on the mechanisms of repair of DNA double strand breaks and the application of this knowledge to Radiation Therapy and Radiation Protection. He obtained his PhD from the Institute of Biophysics, University Frankfurt/Main, Germany, in 1978 under the guidance of Professor Wolfgang Pohlit. After postdoctoral training, first in Frankfurt in the same Institute and then at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, he joined Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia in 1985 as an Associate Professor. He was promoted to Professor in 1989 and became Director of the Division of Experimental Radiation Oncology in the department of Radiation Oncology in 1998. In 2001 he returned to Germany as successor of Professor Streffer, the first awardee of this prize. Research in his laboratories has been supported by numerous grants from the NIH, NCI, and NASA in the USA, by the DFG the BMBF and BMWi in Germany and by European Agencies like ESA and the EU. Research initiated before 2000 helped to demonstrate the importance of alternative end-joining in the processing of DNA double strand breaks and its role in genomic instability and carcinogenesis. Present research activities focus on the integration of DNA double strand break repair pathways and checkpoint responses in a flexible apparatus that optimizes processing and adapts to the type of double strand breaks the cell faces.

Dr. Iliakis has published over 220 papers  (h-index=49) on these topics in several major research journals and some general high impact journals, and is member of the board of several of them. He has presented his data in numerous lectures as invited speaker at international and national meetings.

George Iliakis is the current president of the German Society of DNA Repair Research. He has been President of the Radiation Research Society, USA, as well as of the German Society of Radiation Research. He is a recipient of the Mike Fry award of the RRS, as well as of the Ulrich Hagen Award of the GBS.

Dr Fiona Stewart was a senior group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Amsterdam, until her retirement in September 2013. She did her PhD research at the Gray Laboratory Northwood UK, under the supervision of Julie Denekamp, on normal tissue damage after radiation combined with hyperthermia. After her PhD (1978) she continued working at the Gray Lab, focusing mainly on late radiation effects in kidney and bladder. She also collaborated with Julie Denekamp and Ana Maria Rojas to investigate the radio-protective effects of amifostine in normal tissues, and to compare this with any potential protection of tumors. 
In 1984 she moved to the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam where she set up a new radiobiology group, together with Adrian Begg and with the support of Harry Bartelink. In Amsterdam she continued to investigate mechanisms of late radiation injury, particularly the long-term recovery potential of tissues and their tolerance to re-irradiation. Another focus of the lab at that time was the interaction between radiation and chemotherapeutic drugs, especially cisplatin, in tumors and normal tissues. 
During the 1990s Fiona set up a pre-clinical program to investigate the clinical potential of photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treatment of small superficial tumors. This pre-clinical PDT program resulted in the successful introduction of clinical PDT for oral cavity and skin tumors and a dedicated PDT unit opened in December 2006.
In recent years the main focus of her lab was on radiation induced endothelial cell and vascular damage in relation to late normal tissue injury. The main focus of these studies was to investigate how radiation induces both inflammatory and thrombotic changes in capillaries and large vessels and how these changes lead to progressive development of tissue damage and to atherosclerosis. 
In addition to her laboratory work, Fiona has been an active member of ESTRO since its foundation in 1981; she was a member of the ESTRO Radiobiology Committee from 2007-2013, a board member from 2010- 2013 and is still a core member of the ESTRO Education Committee. She was also Secretary /Treasurer of the International Association for Radiation Research from 1999-2008, a member of Committee 1 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection from 2000-2012, and Councilor and Board Member for Radiation Research from 2002-2005.

Mats Harms-Ringdahl is professor in radiation biology and Head of the Centre for Radiation Protection Research at Stockholm University. He obtained his BSc in genetics and chemistry in 1968 at Stockholm University where he also defended his PhD thesis in 1975.The same year he was appointed Associate professor in Physical Biology at the Department of Radiobiology, Stockholm University. After one year as a post doc at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA, he returned in 1976 to Stockholm University and the Department of Radiobiology to hold a position as associate professor (Docent). He stayed in this position until 1991 when he was offered a position as the head of the Radiobiology unit at the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority (SSI). During the first 15 years at Stockholm University he developed his interest in the field of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and their interaction with different cellular targets. The main focus was on interactions with DNA and how different redox active agents could modify the response. In this work, 8-oxo-dG became an often used marker of oxidative damage of DNA and mechanism behind radiation induced 8-oxo-dG was explored. During the time at SSI his research group established an interest in low dose and dose rate research, triggered by the challenge to bridge the gap in knowledge for risk estimates at low doses (< 100 mSv). His team constructed a radiation facility for chronic exposure of cells in culture to dose rates of a few mGy/hour and studies on cellular responses to low doses and dose rates were initiated. One of the main results accomplished in 1998 was a report on the induction of genomic instability in human peripheral lymphocytes and dose rate effect for the induction of apoptosis in lymphocytes

In 1999 he was appointed professor in radiation biology at Stockholm University, a position he presently holds at the department of Genetics, Microbiology and Toxicology. In the last ten years focus has been on studies of biomarkers of low dose exposure where the first substantial progress was the reports on the mechanisms for radiation induced extra cellular 8-oxo-dG where the nucleotide pool could be identified as the main cellular target. His research team could also demonstrate that low doses of radiation (a few mGy) induced a stress response followed by an endogenous production of ROS several magnitudes higher compared to the ROS production caused by direct action of radiation. In collaboration with the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm he and his colleagues has identified extra cellular 8-oxo-dG in urine and blood as a possible biomarker for diagnosis of individual sensitivity in terms of acute adverse effects after tumour therapy. In the last few years the search for biomarkers of low dose exposure includes differential expression of genes and proteins in collaboration with partners in DoReMi. In 2009 Stockholm University funded the Centre of Radiation Protection Research (CRPR) and appointed him as the Head of the Centre, a position that he holds today. In a European perspective, he contributed as an expert in the HLEG report and in the funding of MELODI, emphasising the essential role of the universities for radiation protection research.

Jolyon H. Hendry obtained a BSc degee in Physics followed by MSc, PhD, and DSc degees in Radiation Biology. He is a radiation biologist with much knowledge of radiation effects on cells and cell constituents, tissues, tumours, organs, animals and humans. Also, he worked on radiobiological mechanisms with reference to improvements in radiotherapy through application of dose-time-fractionation principles, target-cell concepts, predictive biological assays and response modification, analyses of radiotherapy outcome data to deduce values of radiobiological parameters, and radiation effects related to radiation protection.

For many years he was Head of the Experimental Radiation Oncology group at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, Christie Hospital, Manchester, UK. Also, he was a consultant to UNSCEAR; a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Radiation, the UK Government’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE), UK Cancer Research committees, British Institute of Radiology and ESTRO committees; a member of working groups of the Royal Society, Health Protection Agency, ICRP and IAEA; chairman of the UK Association for Radiation Research and the LH Gray Trust; and Chief Editor of the International Journal of Radiation Biology for 7 years. He was awarded an Honorary Professorship at the Institute of Radiation Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Tianjin, China, in 1991, Honorary Membership of the UK Royal College of Radiologists in 1993, an Honorary Chair in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Manchester in 1995, and from 2006 he has been a Senior Consultant to the Institute of Radiation Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing. He has been a member of ICRP Committee 1 since 1993, and secretary since 2005. From 2002-07 he was staff member and later Acting Head of the Section of Applied Radiobiology and Radiotherapy in the Division of Human Health, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, running co-ordinated research and teaching programmes in Radiation Biology applied to Radiotherapy, in particular in developing countries.

He has supervised 16 PhD students and published 250 primary scientific publications, 80 review and conference proceedings articles, 30 correspondence articles to journals, 1 co-authored book and 6 co-edited books. He was a Cancer Research UK core grant holder for many years until 2002, and he also had 20 research grants from oncology and radiation related funding agencies. He was awarded the Roentgen Prize from the British Institute of Radiology in 1982, and the Weiss Medal from the UK Association of Radiation Research in 1999. Since 2007 he has been affiliated to the Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology at the University of Oxford, developing an MSc course in Radiation Biology that started in October 2009, and he is also a Consultant to the Christie Hospital in Manchester.

Eric Wright is Professor of Experimental Haematology at the University of Dundee Medical School. He is a graduate of the University of Sussex and obtained his PhD from the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Manchester. After research fellowships in the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research in Manchester, in 1980 he was appointed Lecturer in Cellular Pathology at the University of St Andrews. In 1987 he moved to the Medical Research Council’s Radiobiology Unit at Harwell (subsequently re-titled the Radiation and Genome Stability Unit) where he held senior posts until 1999 when he moved to the Chair of Experimental Haematology in The University of Dundee.

Prof Wright is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and a Fellow of the Institute of Biology with a long-standing interest in the regulation of the haemopoietic system and the mechanisms underlying abnormalities of stem cell function, such as bone marrow failure and leukaemia development, as a consequence of radiation injury. In the 1980s his laboratory demonstrated that haemopoietic stem cell proliferation is controlled spatially and temporally by interactions within the bone marrow microenvironment and identified and characterized mechanisms contributing to this regulation including effects resulting from a number of specific gene mutations and exposure to ionizing radiation. In the 1990s he worked with a model of radiation-induced acute myeloid leukaemia and associated studies resulted in major publications describing radiation-induced chromosomal instability. More recently his research has focussed on how genetic factors influence cellular and molecular responses to radiation injury and how inflammatory-type responses contribute to the development of longer-term pathological changes.

Prof Wright is the Director of the Leukaemia Research Fund’s Specialist Programme in Radiation Leukaemogenesis and in 1999 was awarded The David Anderson-Berry Medal of The Royal Society of Edinburgh in recognition of “his outstanding work on cellular, genetic and molecular respects of radiation-induced genomic instability in relation to the development of leukaemia and other diseases”. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2007 he was honoured with the Weiss Medal of the Association for Radiation Research, the Bacq Alexander Award of the European Radiation Research Society and was elected a Fellow of the BIR.

Currently he is the Research Dean of the University of Dundee’s Medical School and in recent years has been a Member of The Department of Health’s Committee on Medical Effects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE), Associate Editor of Radiation Research, a member of the Editorial Board of Haematological Oncology, and the Steering Committee of the UK Academic Clinical Oncology and Radiobiology Research Network.. He has also been a member of the UK Government Committee Examining the Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE), the Scottish Executive’s Genetics in Scotland Review Group, the US Department of Energy’s Low Dose Radiation Research Programme Grants Committee, a specialist examiner for the Royal College of Radiologists Faculty of Clinical Oncology He has served as Chair of the Radiation and Cancer Biology Committee of The British Institute of Radiology, the Trustees of the LH Gray Memorial Trust, the Association for Radiation Research, the Scientific Advisory Committee of The Association for International Cancer Research, the Grants Committee of Children with Leukaemia and NASA’s Specialized Centers of Research Grants Committee.

Gerhard Kraft was born in 1941 at Heidelberg, Germany. He studied physics at the University of Heidelberg from 1961 to 1967 and did his diploma work in nuclear physics with measurements of the giant nuclear resonance of light nuclei  at the Heidelberg Betatron-accelerator . For his Ph.D. studies he moved in 1968 to the University of Cologne and worked in the group of nuclear solid state physics. At the Cologne Tandem Van De Graaf accelerator he measured the energy loss of Carbon ions in different solid materials using the Doppler- shift of the gamma quanta emitted from the first exited state of the carbon ions. In 1973 he joined the atomic Physics department of the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI at Darmstadt, where the first experiments could be performed in 1975 at the new accelerator UNILAC. They were focussed on the x-ray emission from super heavy elements that are transiently formed in heavy ion collisions.  Together with the radiobiology group at Giessen ( J. Kiefer ) where his wife Wilma was doing her Ph.D. he started the first radiobiology experiments at GSI  exposing dry yeast cells to very heavy ions up to Uranium. This radiobiology activity was joined later on by the Space Radiobiology group Frankfurt /Cologne calibrating their bio stacks for bio- dosimetric measurements in space. The radiobiology experiments were still in parallel to atomic physics which were partially done at a short sabbatical in 1977 at the CNRS Strasbourg, France.

When the first plans for an upgrade of the GSI accelerators to energies of 15 Ge/V were discussed in 1979, heavy ion tumor therapy became of interest at GSI and Wilma and Gerhard were send for a year to LBL Berkeley in the group of C.A. Tobias and E.A. Blakely in order to get experience in mammalian cell radiobiology and to understand the basics of heavy ion therapy. After return they focussed on experiments with mammalian cells in preparation of ion beam therapy: OER and RBE mainly for light ion beams from protons to Neon. But also the behaviour of the very heavy ions of was of interest and chromosome aberrations were studied. These experiments were performed at the GSI accelerator, at the Max Planck Institute Heidelberg and the GANIL at Caen , France. From the view of radiobiology, Carbon ions emerged as an optimal projectile.

For the technical beam application in therapy he proposed the scanning of a fine pencil beam over the target volume as a novel technique to obtain the ultimate conformity to the target. The construction of the new heavy ion synchrotron SIS (1983-1988 ) brought the chance for the design and construction a prototype of a beam scanning system.

From 1983 Gerhard Kraft was the leader of a slowly growing biophysics group at GSI that focussed on all aspect of carbon beam therapy including treatment planning, beam delivery and dosimetry. In 1993 the construction of an experimental ion beam therapy started. From December 1997 to July 2008 in total 440 patients were treated suffering from tumors in head and neck, along the spinal cord and in the pelvic region. Applying the novel technique of raster-scanning for the first time, the target volume could be exposed with extreme precision to high biologically optimized doses. Because of the low dose to the normal tissue the side effects were extremely low. For most tumor indications a 5 year tumor control rate of 80% to 100% could be reached. Because of this great success heavy ion tumor therapy projects started at Heidelberg and Marburg where he was involved.

G. Kraft was regularly teaching biophysics and basic physics at the Technical University Darmstadt. He wrote more than 150 reviewed articles and contribution to books. After his official retirement he is still active in project on the genetic reactions and the anti-inflammatory action of ionizing radiation (GREWIS) and responsible for the construction of a radon exposure set up for cells and small animals. Gerhard Kraft is a member of the American Society for Radiation Research ,the German Physical Society ( DPG) the European Society for Radiation Research and the German Society of Radiation Research

Awards:

1994 Honorary Professor for biophysics: G.H. University of Kassel

1999 Honorary Professor for physics: Technical University of   Darmstadt TUD

1999 Erwin Schrödinger award of the Helmholtz Community

2000 Otto Hahn Award of the city of Frankfurt

2006 Bacq and Alexander Award of the European Radiation Research Society

2007 Ulrich Hagen Award of the German Society for Biological Radiation Research

2008 Order of merrit first class of the Federal Republic of Germany

2008 Honorary promotion to Dr. h. c. by  the physics faculty of the Justus Liebig University Giessen

2009 Helmholtz Professor for radiation biophysics at GSI

Adayapalam Tyagarajan Natarajan (Nat) is emeritus professor at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and Visiting Professor at University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy. He was born in Mannargudi, Tamil Nadu, India in 1928. He obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Botany at Annamalai University, specializing in Systematic Botany. He joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (I.A.R.I) New Delhi as a post graduate student in the Division of Genetics and Plant Breeding in 1953, obtaining a post-graduate degree (Associate of I.A.R.I) in 1955 and then was appointed as a research assistant in the Cytogenetics section in 1955. He carried out studies under the guidance of Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, on the mutageneic effects of ionizing radiation (X-rays, Fast Neutrons) and chemicals (nitrogen mustard, vegetable oils) on hexaploid wheat, leading to a Ph.D degree of the Delhi University in 1958. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to carry out post-doctoral studies at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA (1959), State Forest Research Institute and Biochemistry Department of Stockholm University, Sweden (1960). This year with Prof. Lars Ehrenberg was very profitable. During this period in Stockholm, he carried out experiments related to the effects of free radicals, monofunctional alkylating agents etc using barley as a model system. On his return to I.A.R.I. he along with his students studied the effects of radiation and alkylating agents in barley. In 1962 he was appointed as Senior Cytogeneticist at IARI. In 1965, he moved to the Biochemistry Department (later Radiation Biology Department) of Stockholm University. He obtained a Ph.D degree of Stockholm University in 1966 and became a Docent. In 1970, after spending a summer at the University of Zurich (Pof. Werner Schmidt), he started working with mammalian cells concentrating on the influence of heterochromatin in the formation of chromosomal aberrations using different rodent models such as, Chinese hamster, Field voles, Hedge hogs etc., in collaboration with Prof. Alfred Gropp of University of Bonn (West Germany). In 1974 Natarajan moved to Vienna to head the section of Radiation Biology at the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 1975, he was invited by Prof. Frits Sobels to join Leiden University to establish a Cytogenetics section at the Department of Radiation Genetics and Chemical Mutagenesis and became Professor of Radiation Cytogenetics, a position he held till his retirement in 1998. During this period, his studies were focused on the basic mechanisms involved in the formation of chromosome aberrations following exposure to radiations and chemicals. He employed molecular cytogenetic techniques such as Fluoresence in situ hybridization (FISH), comet FISH etc., combined with biochemical techniques. He was also involved in applied aspects of cytogenetics, such as clinical genetics, population monitoring following chemical exposure (Arsenic, Ethylene Oxide, Vinyl chloride) and radiation (biological dosimetry). He has published more than 400 research papers, reviews and book chapters. He edited 10 volumes on congress proceedings. He was member of the editorial board of several journals, such as, Mutation Research (all sections), International Journal of Radiation Biology. Mutagenesis, Brazilian Journal of Molecular Genetics. Along with Prof. Obe he organized 10 International Symposia on Chromosome Aberrations. Twenty students from India, Sweden, The Netherlands, Indonesia, Brazil and Bulgaria obtained their doctor’s degree under his guidance. Over 50 post-doctoral fellows from all over the world worked in his laboratory in Leiden over the years. He coordinated several EURATOM and EU chemical effects projects.

He was awarded several fellowships during his career, Annamalai University Research fellowship (1948-51), Tata Memorial fellowship at I.A.R.I (1953-1955), Rockefeller Foundation fellowship (Brookhaven Lab. USA. 1959), SIDA fellowship (Stockholm University, Sweden, 1960), EMBO fellowship (University of Zurich, 1971), Royal Society of London fellowship (Edinburg University, 1974). He was a visiting professor at University of Bonn (1971,1972), Osaka University (2004). He was Regional Expert in mutation breeding in rice for IAEA/FAO at Bangkok (1966). On behalf IAEA, he helped establishing a Biological Dosimetry Laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1987) and actively participated in the dose estimation as well as follow up studies on radiation victims of Goiania accident in Brazil (1988 onwards). He has been member of many scientific review committees of several research organizations including, National Radiological Protection Board (UK), Institut de Radioprotection, IRSN, France, GSF, Munich (Germany), Radiation Research Foundation, Hiroshima (Japan), Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (New Delhi). Natarajan received several awards, including European Environmental Mutagen Society Award (1990), Environmental Mutagen Society (USA) Award (2004), Bacq and Alexander Award of the European Radiation Research Society (2004), Life time Achievement Award from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology University (2012, India).

Dudley T. Goodhead was Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Radiation and Genome Stability Unit at Harwell, UK, until his retirement in September 2003.  The Unit carried out basic research on the relationship of genome stability to human health, including how the DNA may be damaged by radiation and other agents and how the cellular repair systems act to restore normality.  He continues as a visitor at MRC Harwell and assists a variety of agencies and joint research projects in the UK, the European Union and the USA in evaluating and guiding their research programmes.  His personal research focus has been mainly on the biophysics of radiation effects with particular emphasis on microscopic features of radiation track structure at the atomic, molecular and cellular levels and their consequent radiobiological and health effects.  His work has included the experimental application of a variety of standard and unusual radiation fields to cellular biological systems to probe the mechanisms underlying radiation quality and biological response, and theoretical simulations and analyses of radiation track structure to reveal key microscopic features of the radiations and resulting molecular damage.  Use of ultrasoft X-rays in the 1970s revealed that highly localized clusters of ionizations from single low-energy electrons on the scale of a few nanometers are effective at causing a wide range of biological consequences; subsequent track structure analyses of these and high-LET radiations led to the hypotheses of clustered DNA damage, particularly double-strand breaks of varying complexities.

Dudley Goodhead was born and educated to post-graduate level in South Africa. Thereafter he gained his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford (UK) in 1965 in high-energy particle physics and then went on to academic positions at the University of California (Los Angeles), St Bartholomew’s Hospital (University of London) and the University of Natal (Durban, South Africa).  He joined the MRC Radiobiology Unit at Harwell in 1975. 

Professor Goodhead has served on a variety of national and international committees on evaluation of radiation risks.  These have included the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) in the UK, the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR-VI) radon-risk assessment in the USA, consultancies to the United Nations Scientific Committee on Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Working Groups of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on carcinogenic risk of gamma rays, neutrons and internally-deposited radionuclides, the Royal Society (on risks from depleted uranium) and the Advisory Group on Ionising Radiation (AGIR) of the Health Protection Agency in the UK.  He was chairman of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) in the UK until its final report in October 2004.  He acted as the technical secretariat to the High Level and Expert Group on Low Dose Risk Research (HLEG) in Europe, which in 2009 recommended the development of a Europe-wide platform for this area of radiation research and led to the formation of the MELODI platform.  More recently he served on the Committee for Evaluation of Space Radiation Cancer Risk Model (National Research Council of the National Academies, USA). And he has been scientific director of the annual NASA Space Radiation Summer Schools for 2011-2013.

In June 2002, in the Queen’s birthday honours list, Professor Goodhead was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to medical research. He has been the recipient of various other awards, including the Weiss Medal (Association of Radiation Research, UK), Failla Medal (Radiation Research Society, USA), Douglas Lea Lecturer (Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, UK), Bacq and Alexander Award (European Society of Radiation Biology), Honorary Fellowship of Society of Radiological Protection (UK) and Warren K Sinclair Lecturer (National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, USA) and the Gray Medal (International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements).

Johannes Jacobus (Johan) Broerse was born in Amsterdam in 1934. He studied nuclear and molecular physics at the University of Amsterdam. During his military service he worked at the Technology Laboratory of the Defense Research Organisation TNO. In 1961 he joined the staff of the Radiobiological Institute TNO at Rijswijk and performed research in dosimetry and radiobiology of fast neutrons resulting in a thesis on this subject in 1966. His further investigations were connected with the late effects of ionizing radiation. In cooperation with his younger colleague dr. Hans Zoetelief he performed international X-ray dosimetry intercomparisons and formulated dosimetry protocols for radiobiology. In 1974 he had a temporary position at the Department of Radiology, Stanford University USA. He was appointed as professor of Medical Radiation Physics at the University of Leiden in 1986. Subsequently he and his associates performed research on radiation carcinogenesis in experimental animals and on dose reduction and optimization in diagnostic radiology. After his retirement in 1999 which was obligatory in the Netherlands, he fulfilled some advisory functions, including membership of the Dutch Health Council. With a committee of this Council he finalized in 2007 a report on the risks of exposure to ionizing radiation.

Professor Broerse carried numerous functions. Among others, he was a member of the EORTC Fast Neutron Therapy Project Group, council member of the European Late Effects Project Group (EULEP), chairman of the Committee on Dosimetry Standardization (EULEP), chairman of the Report Committee on Neutron Dosimetry for Biology and Medicine(ICRU), member of the International Neutron Dosimetry Intercomparison Committee (ICRU), chairman of the European Clinical Neutron Dosimetry Group (ECNEU), treasurer of the European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS), president of the European Society for Radiation Biology from 1980 to 1982, president of the Dutch Radiobiological Society, secretary-treasurer for the International Association for Radiation Research and its president from 1995-1999. He was the secretary-general for the 7th Internation Congress of Radiation Research held in Amsterdam in 1983. He received several rewards among others the Award of the "Damon Runyon Memorial Fund" for fundamental physical and biological studies related to neutron radiotherapy in 1967, the Dr Nagai Peace Memorial Prize for fundamental research in radiobiology and radiation protection in Nagasaki in 2000 and the Hans Langendorff medal of the German Association of Radiology in 2004. He was elected Knight in the order of Orange Nassau for outstanding service to the state and society and honorary member of the Swedish Radiobiological Society, the British Association for Radiation Research, the European Late Effects Project Group (EULEP) and the European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS).

Jean René Maisin was born in Leuven in 1928. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1954, specializing in pathology 1959 and then in radio-diagnosis and in radio-therapy in 1961. He trained in the United States in 1959 at the National Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee with a WHO fellowship, and in 1960 at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC, with a NIH fellowship of the United States. In 1962 he was made Head of the Department of Radiobiology for the Study Center of Nuclear Energy in Mol (SCK•CEN). Since 1965 he has been registered as physician responsible for medical supervision of occupationally exposed people to ionizing radiation (Class 1). He completed Aggregation of higher education at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in 1966. Dr. Maisin was appointed lecturer at UCL Faculty of Medicine in 1970, special lecturer in 1973, extraordinary professor in 1981 and professor emeritus in 1993. And in 1985 he was appointed Scientific Advisor to the Directorate General of SCK•CEN with the title of Head of Division. He has authored over 250 scientific papers concerning radiobiology, radiation, oncology, and pathology. Jean René Maisin was elected Secretary General of the "European Late Effect Project Group" (EULEP) from 1970 to 1985, and then president from 1985 to 1995. He was made an honorary member in 1996. He became a member of the elected Board of Directors of the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) in 1991, acting president in 1993, president from 1995 to 1999 and honorary member in 1999. From 1985 until 2009 he served as Belgian representative at the United Nations Committee to the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and chairman of the committee in 1991 and 1992. He was an elected member of the Board of Directors of the European Association of Radiobiology (1978-1993) and president from 1986 to 1988. He was a member of the Board of the International Society of Radiation Research from 1983 to 1991. he was a consulting expert to the Commissariat Français de l'Energie Atomique. He was a member of the Belgian delegation to the working group of experts on "chemoprophylaxis" and to the group "RSG" of commission VIII of NATO. He was a consulting expert in Radiobiology of the "Haut Commissariat à la recherche de la République Algérienne Démocratique et Populaire". Jean René Maisin is also a founding member of the Belgian Committee of Animal Sciences laboratory (BCLAS) and served as secretary and chairman of the Committee, founding member of the Belgian Society of Radiobiology and president of this society (1985-1986) He was a member of the Board of Belgian Radiation Protection Society, he was a member and president of Group IV "chemical carcinogenesis" to the Belgian Superior Council of Cancer, member of the Belgian Society of Pathology, member and president, member of the Council of Welfare of Animals at the Ministry of Health and Family and a member of the Ethic Committee and Vice Chairman of the Committee of the same ministry. He served as member of the American Association for the Advancement of science and member of the New York Academy of Science. He is a recipient of the Medal "Hanns-Langendorff" of the German Association of Radiology in 1994 and of the Bacq and Alexander medal of the European Society of Radiation Biology in 1997. He has been decorated Great officer Order of Crown, Commander Order of Leopold II, Officer Order of Leopold. Dr. Maisin is married to Claudine Derrider, he is father of three and grandfather of six flawless grandchildren.