Written by: Niharika Chapagain - 25006, Grade IX
Posted on: 13 July, 2021
On 28th June 2021, a program “Science talk” was conducted by our school, as an activity of the month of Asar, and the host of the program was a student from Grade XI, Aashutosh Pudasaini, who wholeheartedly welcomed the guest of the program Dr. Ananta Raj Chalise. The science talk was conducted for the students from grade IX to XII, and the students joined the program via google meet, due to the current circumstances. Dr. Chalise is a cancer researcher and a postdoctoral scholar at Radiation Medicine and Applied Science, University of California - School of Medicine, located in San Diego. He completed his Ph.D. in Physics and Applied Physics from the University of Texas located at Arlington. He had completed his Masters in Physics from Tribhuvan University and he had researched regarding the quality assurance brachytherapy (a cancer treatment where the radioactive material is planted on the patient’s body to damage the cancer cells).
In the program, he talked to High school students about “Medical Physics and its Applications” as his topic. Dr. Chalise stated that he is working on cutting-edge research to automate comprehensive patient-specific Quality Assurance tools for radiotherapy treatments in Varian Halcyon. He also talked about the application of medicine in the therapy of cancer treatment. The science talk was fruitful as I got to learn exactly how halcyon works. Halcyon Radiation Therapy is the therapy to treat cancer of the head, brain, neck, breasts, etc. Halcyon Therapy visualizes the cancer tumor and shows the exact location of the tumor through 3d images that help the doctor to decide the doses of medicine required for the patient. He also mentioned radiation therapy in which the patient is given a high dose of medicine to kill cancer cells and avoid their growth. He explained about the safe and efficient cancer treatment delivery by presenting slides. To go through safe and efficient cancer treatment, the patient is gone through a process of radiation simulation where the doctor makes marks on the patient’s skin’s part that should be treated, and then the doctor spots localized cell by performing an external beam (a process in which a machine scans the patient’s body, by moving around without touching the patient.
While executing the treatment plan made by the doctor, safety checks, the functionality of the equipment must be checked. At the end of the program, the students asked their questions through the chat section, and the host read it out for all of the people present in the program. Dr. Chalise answered all of the questions and cleared the confusion of the students, and then the program was over. The science talk session was really informative, however, me being a student of grade IX, some of the contexts that were talked about, during the program were not familiar to me, though Dr. Chalise tried his best to explain.
