The Upstate New York Chapter of the AAPM held its spring meeting at Jacobs School of Medicine, Buffalo, NY on April 12, 2019. During the business meeting, Dr Harish Malhotra, the AAPM board representative from the chapter, presented his report of the recently concluded AAPM spring retreat at Orlando, Fl and apprised the members about the various initiatives being taken by AAPM to help Chapters to achieve their goals. The Chapter's treasurer, Dr Vikas Patel, presented the balance sheet of the chapter.

The scientific program of the meeting had two invited presentations as well as SLAM & Young's investigator symposium. From the Canon Stroke & Vascular Research Center of University at Buffalo, three students described their research. Chao Guo talked about the accuracy of interpolating room scatter distributions between C-Arm geometric parameters for fluoroscopic procedures. Alexander Podgorsak discussed the use of a convolutional neural network for automatic treatment guidance for endovascular intervention of saccular aneurysms. Sheng-Hsuan Sun described dependence of skin dose on x-ray beam angle of incidence. Weiyuan Sun, from University at Albany, on the other hand, presented the results of x-ray phase imaging based on focusing polycapillary optics and quantitative phase retrieval. Josh Kilian-Meneghin from Roswell Park Cancer Institute presented his work on the development and initial testing of a geometric tool for patient-specific VMAT collimator optimization. Joshua Mathews, also from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, talked about further enhancing optimization of VMAT plans using Monte Carlo-based modifications to control Points.

In a distinguished speaker series, Dr. Vikas Patel from Upstate Medical Physics, shared his knowledge about the primary diagnostic monitors. Dr. Sean Tanny from SUNY Upstate Medical University presented their experience in transitioning from LDR to MR-guided gynecology HDR brachytherapy program. Both the talks were well received by the audience as demonstrated by various thought-provoking questions which were very nicely explained by the invited faculty.

The later part of the meeting was devoted to the Young Investigators competition. Eleven researchers from University at Buffalo, University at Albany & Roswell Park Cancer Institute fought in a keenly contested competition for Gold, Silver, & Bronze prizes. The presentations covered a broad spectrum of topics including diagnostic imaging physics as well as therapeutic physics and were well received by the capitating audience.

The meeting ended with customary awards ceremony. Chapter's president,Dr. Sanjay Raina, bestowed the prizes to the winners. Joshua Matthews from Roswell Park Cancer Institute bagged the coveted SLAM competition award as well as silver award of the Young's Investigator competition. He also became UNYAPM nominee for the national SLAM competition to be held at 2019 annual AAPM meeting. The gold and bronze prize for the Young's investigator competition were won by Alexander Podgorsak & Mohammad Mahdi Shiraz Bhurwani, respectively. The awards carried the cash prizes as well as appropriate citations.

The meeting had a good representation from the trade and multiple vendors demonstrated their products which were well appreciated by the meeting attendants.

The next chapter meeting will be held in the Fall of 2019. The highlight of the next meeting will be the presentation of the Upstate NY Chapter's Lifetime Achievement award in Medical Physics. By convention, this year the award will be given to a medical physicist having a distinguished career in Radiation Therapy Physics. Details of the meeting will be available shortly.