INFN@Young: 4th event

by Ambra Mariani (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Wednesday 29 Mar 2023, 17:00 → 19:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. G.Marconi)

17:15 - 17:40 

1° Speaker: Antonio Trigilio

Titolo: "Beam monitors for FLASH radiotherapy: less is more"

Abstract: "Radiotherapy is now 130 years old; the possibility to employ ionizing radiation to treat cancer, boosting the anti-tumor efficacy whilst sparing healthy tissues from collateral damages, has been explored in multiple directions, using particles of different energies, types and modes of irradiation. In recent times, a new experimental evidence is attracting a lot of interest from medical physics community: the use of therapeutic beams at ultra-high dose rates (>100 Gy/s), delivering all the needed dose in a very short treatment time (<0.1 s), has been found to have a protective effect on healthy tissues, strongly reducing radiation-induced toxicities with respect to conventional radiotherapy. This has been named the “FLASH effect”, and is currently investigated as a promising break-through for the future of radiotherapy. However, the FLASH mechanism still needs a thorough investigation before its beneficial impact could be properly implemented in clinical practice. In this contribution, I will discuss the crucial role played by beam monitoring systems on the definition of a FLASH therapeutic beam, the challenges related to their operation in such extreme values of dose-rate, and I will present the results of a new method for on-line monitoring at FLASH intensities, based on air fluorescence and developed within the FlashDC project at INFN Roma 1, “La Sapienza” University and CREF."

17:40 - 18:05: 

2° Speaker: Javier Cristin

Titolo: "Collective behavior in biological systems: a statistical physics approach”

Abstract. “Flocks of birds, fish schools or insect swarms are some examples of extraordinary collective behaviors that we find in nature.  We know that these behaviors are the result of local rules. This is similar to what happens in many condensed matter systems, in which local interactions between particles or spins generate collective phenomena. For this reason, statistical physics provides very useful concepts and methodologies for understanding such phenomena. Therefore, in recent years, many physicists have focused on studying the collective movement in groups of animals.  In this talk I will briefly explain how statistical physics concepts are used to characterize this phenomenology.  Also, which ones are the experiments, simulations and theoretical analyses that are being carried out in this direction within my research group."