As the director of medical physics at Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Aaron Andersen describes himself as ‘a Rebel living in Wolfpack territory.’

For the past nine years, he’s been responsible for quality and safety of Renown’s radiation oncology department, in addition to managing staff, working on quality improvement projects, calibrating treatment machines, and completing chart checks for cancer patients.

“The thing I love the most is that it’s different every day,” Andersen said.

Not only is he improving the lives of cancer patients in Reno, he’s improved UNLV’s footprint in the northern part of the state by establishing a residency program for students in the university’s Doctor of Medical Physics program, housed within the School of Integrated Health Sciences.

There is a national need for medical physicists, according to Steen Madsen, chair of UNLV’s Department of Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences, including an additional need for more clinical residency locations.

“It’s a very niche profession. Most students with a medical background might not have the physics background to get into medical physics,” Madsen said. “But just over 50% of all cancer patients will be treated with radiation for their cancer. As the population ages, cancer becomes more prevalent. Medical physics is a field that’s growing.”

Uniquely Specialized, Highly Needed

UNLV tried establishing a residency program with Renown in years past, Madsen said, but Andersen’s arrival as its medical physics director helped make it a reality.

UNLV’s Doctor of Medical Physics program is one of only four in the nation. The education is uniquely specialized, but students enrolled in the program are guaranteed a residency. Until Andersen developed a program at Renown, UNLV’s students needed to go out-of-state to complete their two-year residencies. 

“The country has a shortage of clinical sites, and the first thing I wanted to do was to work with UNLV to establish a new site,” Andersen said. “That involved making sure it was appropriate for accreditation. At Renown, we’re one site. We have our whole physics, dosimetry, and physician team together. This is ideal for providing quality clinical training to the residents that are here for two years.” 

Madsen said Renown’s hospital-based clinic is advantageous to UNLV’s residents because they see and study different radiation oncology procedures, experiences they wouldn’t have in an outpatient clinic.

Bradley Smith is UNLV’s first medical physics student to do a residency at Renown. As he enters the second year of his training, he credits Andersen and the Renown staff for challenging him at work every day.

“When I show up to work, it does not feel like a standard job. It feels like a mission to which I am constantly recommitting,” Smith said. “Dr. Andersen’s goal for the program is clear: to train medical physics residents in how to effectively bridge medical physics theory with clinical practice.”

As a therapeutic medical physics resident, Smith is training to work alongside radiation oncologists, medical dosimetrists, medical physicists, radiation therapists, and nurses to provide the highest quality of care for cancer patients receiving radiation.

“Each treatment plan is custom tailored for each patient,” he said. “We double check each radiation therapy plan before it is delivered to make sure it is safe and meets the goals of the radiation oncologist.”

As part of his training, Smith also works with treatment machines, known as medical linear accelerators, or linacs. 

“A major part of the physicist’s role is to ensure that these linacs are delivering radiation exactly as intended through a series of rigorous daily, monthly, and annual tests,” he said. “These highly sophisticated machines can deliver radiation with pinpoint accuracy and precision, whether to large tumors or to targets just a few millimeters in size.”

UNLV Offers a Foundation for Opportunities

Andersen credited the highly specific training he received at UNLV as a reason for wanting to pay it forward to his alma mater, and subsequently, to the state of Nevada. 

“One of the world’s biggest radiation oncology companies has a major training center in Las Vegas, and I was able to learn from some of their people while I was a student at UNLV,” he said. “They were working on new developments in radiation oncology, and as a student, I got to use their equipment and machines. I don’t think you get that experience in other programs.”

After graduating from UNLV in 2013, Andersen completed a stint of medical physics research at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah before completing his residency at Indiana University and his Ph.D. at Purdue University. 

When he’s not working, furthering his research, or educating UNLV’s medical physics residents in the hospital, he enjoys the beautiful northern Nevada landscape and its outdoor access with his wife and six kids.

“It’s tough to find that work-life balance sometimes,” he said. “But without my UNLV experience, none of these other opportunities would have happened.”