The Southern California Chapter of the AAPM held the 2018 Norm Baily Awards and the Inaugural MedPhys Slam on May 8, 2018 at The Cove at UCI Applied Innovation on the UC Irvine Campus in Irvine, CA. Sixteen entries were received in all for the research competition open to Graduate Students/Post-doctoral researchers and residents from various schools around Southern California. Cash prizes were distributed to the first and second places in the Graduate Student and Post-doc/Resident category respectively. The first-place winner in the graduate student category was Kaley Woods of University of California at Los Angeles for her study entitled "A Double-Focused Sparse Orthogonal Collimator for Small Animal IMRT Using Rectangular Aperture Optimization". The second-place winner in the graduate student category was Dylan O'Connell also from University of California, Los Angeles. In the Post-doc/Resident category the first-place winner was Victoria Yu, PhD for her research entitled "Novel Optical whole-body patient surface mapping for robust personalized collision modeling and prevention in external beam radiotherapy" while the second-place winner was Wenbo Wei, PhD from the University of California, Irvine. The first-place winners in each category gave a 10-minute presentation on their respective research efforts.

The second part of the Awards Ceremony was dedicated to the MedPhys Slam competition. Four students/residents participated in the MedPhys Slam wherein they highlighted their research in a 3-minute presentation aimed at sharing the what, how, and why of their research and convincing the audience that their work is impactful and important. The audience was polled using a web-based audience response platform to determine the winner. Kaley Woods from the University of California, Los Angeles was judged the winner of the MedPhys Slam Competition and represented the Southern California Chapter at the MedPhys Slam competition held on July 31, 2018 at the AAPM Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN.

In other news, the Chapter recently held elections and Laura I. Cerviño from University of California, San Diego and Sharon Qi from University of California, Los Angeles were elected President-Elect and Board Representative respectively.

The next Chapter Meeting (Fall Meeting) is scheduled for October 2018 at the University of California, Los Angeles Campus. Program details will be posted on the Chapter website in the near future.

The winners of the 2018 Norm Baily Awards at the Awards Ceremony and Dinner held at The Cove at UC Irvine Applied Innovation in Irvine, CA. From left to right, Wenbo Wei, Kaley Woods, Victoria Yu, Dylan O'Connell and Southern California Chapter Education Committee Co-Chair, Marianne Plunkett, MS.

Ryan Neph from the University of California, Los Angeles presenting a 3 minute overview of his research as part of the MedPhys Slam competition organized by the Southern California Chapter of the AAPM at the Norm Baily Awards Ceremony and Dinner held at The Cove at UC Irvine Applied Innovation in Irvine, CA.