Northern California Chapter Proposes to Host an Accelerator-Oriented Midyear Meeting
Accelerators will be a hot topic of discussion this summer when the Northern California Chapter of the Health Physics Society (NCCHPS) makes its pitch to host a midyear symposium on radiation-generating machines. Representatives from the NCCHPS will make their presentation to the Venues Committee at this summer's 50th Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society (HPS) in Spokane, Washington.
NCCHPS will propose to host the 2008 midyear meeting in Oakland, California. Oakland is centrally located with respect to many facilities of interest to accelerator health physicists: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), NASA Ames Research Center, University of California campuses in San Francisco and Davis, Varian Medical Systems, and SAIC, to name a few. Furthermore, Oakland offers easy access to all destinations within the San Francisco Bay Area and visitor attractions abound.
John Ahlquist, immediate past president of the NCCHPS, is leading the initiative to bring the 2008 midyear to Oakland. As John notes in the draft bid package, eleven years have passed since a topical meeting was last held on the important subject of radiation-generating machines. If the NCCHPS is successful in its bid, the 2008 midyear will be a great opportunity to share the latest developments in accelerator health physics with our colleagues at accelerator facilities and with the radiation protection community in general.