Zaider Wins Edelman Award

Dr. Marco Zaider, Senior Lecturer of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health and Attending Physicist of Medical Physics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Dr. Eva K. Lee, Georgia Institute of Technology, received the Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research for work entitled “Operations Research Answers to Cancer Therapeutics.”

They devised sophisticated optimization modeling and computational techniques to implement an intra-operative 3D treatment planning system for brachytherapy (the placement of radioactive “seeds” inside a tumor) that offers a safer and more reliable treatment. The work improves the survival rate of patients with prostate cancer, reduces the side effects of treatment, and reduces costs to the health care system.