ISyE associate professor Shabbir Ahmed works on improving intensity-modulated radiation therapy treatment plans to minimize damage to critical organs.  His work is featured on pages 19 and 20.

“Previous models would produce one treatment plan in an hour and then if it was not exactly what the clinician wanted, someone would have to change the requirements and rerun the program to create a new treatment plan,” explained Ahmed.  “Our program produces several optimized solutions in a fraction of the time.”

Eva Lee, an ISyE associate professor, is contributing to the area of cancer treatment by addressing motion issues for certain organs within the body and incorporating biological information into treatment planning.  Her work is featured on page 21.

“Accounting for motion in the image-guided treatment planning dramatically improves under-dosing the tumor tissue and even reduces the dose to normal tissue and critical organs,” said Lee.

Ming Yuan, ISyE associate professor and Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar, is using computational and mathematical approaches to analyze how gene expression evolves over time in individuals with breast cancer.  His work is featured on page 26. 

“We want to know which genes are abnormally expressed over time and behave differently than the majority of genes because that would make them likely drug targets,” said Yuan.

Research Horizons magazine is published three times a year to communicate the results of research conducted at Georgia Tech.  The magazine is published by the Research News & Publications Office, and supported by the Executive Vice President for Research and the Georgia Tech Research Institute.