This year the Upstate New York Physicist Chapter hosted a meeting at the Jacobs School of Medicine in Buffalo, NY on June 22, 2018. The meeting included three distinguished speakers from within our community who shared their unique viewpoint about the current and future trends and directions of our profession.

Dr. Daryl Nazareth is a board certified therapy physicist and Associate Professor at the University of Buffalo. His presentation discussed clinical applications of quantum computing and digital annealing to radiotherapy optimization. He also spoke about the growth of deep learning and it's promising applications to the future of imaging and therapy physics.

Dr. Stephen Rudin is a fellow of AAPM and Director of the Medical Physics Program at the University of Buffalo. He has been active in the development of a host of cutting-edge technology and methodology in the area of medical diagnostic and interventional imaging. His talk discussed the expanded role of a medical physicist with the implementation of high resolutions cameras, dose tracking technology and 3D printing.

Dr. Richard Harvey is the Radiation Safety Officer of Roswell Park Cancer Center, and he spoke about the rapidly changing imaging and therapy treatments and the need for cross-certification.

In addition to the distinguished talks, we hosted a slam competition audition and invited three non-physicist judges to choose between six ambitious participants. The winner of our competition was Naveed Islam and he received a $500 cash award to present on the behalf of the chapter at the 2018 AAPM Annual Meeting.

The proffered and paper session included 10 student speakers from the Roswell Cancer Center Institute and Toshiba Stroke and Vascular Research Center who shared their research and competed for three cash award prizes. In total, we gave our young aspiring medical physicists $1100 in cash award prizes.

The next meeting is scheduled for October 2018 in Rochester, NY and we plan to honor a diagnostic physicist with a Lifetime Achievement Award for their contributions to our profession. More details about the event can be found on our new website.