Coming around the curve of South Campus and Fieldhouse Drive sits a small building with signs saying, “Caution: Radiation Area.”
The Nuclear Science Building, home of the medical and health physics graduate programs, is a building full of surprises.
In the highly secured and monitored basement sits a Cobalt 60 radioactive isotope under 6 meters, or approximately 18 feet, of water and a self-contained irradiator machine shielded by a small 100-pound door, said Travis Halphen, a physics undergraduate concentrating in medical physics.
People who have extended exposure to the basement area must wear a radiation monitor to make sure their bodies stay within safe levels of radiation, he said.
The third room in the basement is the waste room, which has motion sensors and cameras monitoring activity because there is a “higher level of radiation there,” Halphen said.
The basement was a dairy barn before it housed radioactive isotopes. Nevertheless, it acts as an excellent shield for the sensitive materials, he said.
The Office of Radiation Safety also is housed in the Nuclear Science building. It tracks and catalogues every radioactive isotope that comes to the University, said Halphen, who is a student worker in the Office of Radiation Safety.
“There are so many users of radioactive isotopes on campus that we have to monitor the use and regulation of them on campus,” said Erno Sajo, an associate professor of physics and astronomy.
While people may cringe when they think of radioactive isotopes, Halphen said he works every day right above the basement, and there have never been any problems.
“These things are shielded and safe,” he said.
Medical physics graduate students are not the only users of the basement. Students studying microbiology also use the Cobalt 60 and irradiator machines to run experiments on micro-organisms, said Sajo.
Besides running experiments with radioactive isotopes, the medical physics department has been researching prostate cancer treatments with radioactive seeds implanted in the narrow space between the prostate tissue and the prostate, called brachytherapy, Sajo said.
The health physics department also has been investigating how aerosols disperse in closed buildings, which is important because of recent bio-terrorism threats, Sajo said.
Medical physics used to be a part of the department of nuclear engineering, but the University decided to discontinue the nuclear engineering program because it did not meet minimum enrollment requirements, he said.
“As soon as they got rid of the program, there were enough inquires to fill two entire classes,” Sajo said.
Once the nuclear engineering degree was abolished, medical and health physics took over the Nuclear Science building, he said.
The program only has 12 students enrolled in the past three years, which is a good size for the graduate program, Sajo said.
The first-year students do most of their work at the Nuclear Science building, the second-year students study at the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and third-year students write a thesis, he said.
The University currently is working on getting the medical and health physics departments accredited, Sajo said.
“Now there are only nine accredited programs,” he said. “We are going to try to become the tenth.”
Among the other nine accredited universities are M.D. Anderson, Washington University of St. Louis, Mo., and the University of Florida at Gainesville, Sajo said.
Jabari Robinson, a first-year medical physics graduate student, said he chose the medical physics field because of the “in-demand job outlook.”
While the course curriculum is demanding, Robinson said any degree in physics is demanding.
Students who graduate from the medical physics master’s program have a starting salary of $130,000 and have on average four job opportunities upon graduation, Sajo said.