Objective
Develop a new type B certified shipping container dedicated to transport new isotopes issued from CERN-MEDICIS project and work on mass separation process for new isotopes production.

Context
Radioisotopes are widely used for both functional imaging and therapy. For imaging, mostly 99mTechnetium and 18Fluorine are used but new isotopes are being studied in connection to the theranostic approach where imaging and therapy are combined to personalize each treatment of a given patient. To this end, pairs of isotopes are being proposed (¹⁵²Tb/¹⁶¹Tb …). Another new approach is linked to the use of alpha emitters which have high energy transfer over a short distance enabling to treat residual disease and disseminated tumor cells.

MEDICIS-PROMED will train a new generation of scientists to develop systems for personalized Medicine combining functional imaging and treatments using innovative isotopes produced using radioactive ion beam mass separation.

This project is managed through a coherent inter-sectorial multidisciplinary network with world-leading scientists in their field (CERN, ILL, AAA, Leuven University …).

In order to transport those new isotopes, a container has to be developed. Indeed, the activity threshold for the non-conventional isotopes transport given by the current European regulation (A₂ limit) is lower than the classical activity needed for human injection of this new isotope. Hence, the transport has to be made thanks to type B container. This yields to a complicate process of certification, with long multi-disciplinary expertise.

Expected Results
The student will work on mass separation as well as on the design of a new type B container to accommodate these isotopes.

• Identification of the typical isotopes (^{149,152,155,161}Tb, ¹⁷⁷Lu, ^{47, 48,49}Sc, etc.) produced by the mass separation process
• Participation to the data collection in ISOLDE / MEDICIS experiments
• Study of off-line mass separation process for alpha emitter ^210/211At produced with an alpha beam
• Study of the European regulation for the safe transport of radioactive material (IAEA SSR-6) and identification of shipment threshold activities for the identified isotopes
• Radioprotection study and calculation of protection thickness through Monte-Carlo simulations
• Study of an innovative system aiming to directly transfer the isotopes from the MEDICIS mass separator into the shipping container
• Design of prototype including thermal and Mechanical resistance studies
• Preparation of type B homologation dossier

Expected candidate
Applicants must hold, or expect to receive, a master degree in physics or equivalent in mechanical engineering. Will be considered as an asset an expertise in one or more of this topics:

• Radioprotection
• Nuclear science
• Monte Carlo simulations
• Thermal heat transfer

The applicant must be curious, autonomous and show a willingness and ability to learn the physics underlying the experimental techniques. Furthermore, the European background of this network imposes all the communication to be in English. Hence, the applicant has to show strong communication skills in English.

Interested applicants should send a full academic transcript, a short CV and an expression of interest to Dr Sebastien Avila (Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.) and Pr Ferid Haddad (Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.).