BioPT: Biophysics in Particle Therapy
Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) · Heidelberg, Germany
Welcome
BioPT is an interdisciplinary research group based at the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center (HIT), working to advance ion beam therapy for cancer treatment. We collaborate with clinicians and researchers to develop biological models, simulation tools, and treatment planning approaches for particle therapy.
For more information about our group, please visit our official site:
klinikum.uni-heidelberg.de → Biophysik in der Partikeltherapie
General Inquiries
For general questions or if you're interested in joining the group, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Andrea Mairani — andrea.mairani@med.uni-heidelberg.de
Available Master's Thesis Projects
GPU-Accelerated Monte Carlo Dose Calculation
GPU acceleration is essential to bring Monte Carlo dose calculation into real-time clinical workflows, especially for adaptive treatments guided by in-room MRI. This project focuses on porting the MonteRay dose engine to GPUs to achieve a 10–20× speedup. The work involves profiling, parallelization, and CUDA development, with the goal of enabling second-scale dose computation even in the presence of complex magnetic fields. Special focus will be on handling inhomogeneous magnetic fields, which are unsupported by current clinical engines.
Requirements
- Very good English skills
- Experience with scripting (e.g., Python), Linux, Git, and CMake
- Strong C++ and CUDA skills
- Background in particle physics, medical physics, or computer science is a plus
Posted: 09/07/2025
More information: peter.lysakovski@uni-heidelberg.de
Mini-Beam Oxygen Ion Therapy in MonteRay
Mini-beams can reduce damage to healthy tissue by spatially fractionating the dose, potentially improving tolerance in sensitive regions. Oxygen ions provide sharper dose distributions and greater biological effectiveness than protons or carbon, making them attractive for resistant tumors. This project extends MonteRay to support oxygen ion therapy and mini-beam treatment planning, including nuclear interaction data for oxygen and relevant filter materials, and implementing mini-beam geometry simulation. May include experimental validation.
Requirements
- Very good English skills
- Experience with scripting (e.g., Python), Linux, Git, and CMake
- Background in particle physics, medical physics, or computer science is a plus
Posted: 09/07/2025
More information: peter.lysakovski@uni-heidelberg.de
Student Assistant Position (HiWi)
Front-End Development Student Assistant
Role Overview
Turn our C++ dose calculation engine into a simple web interface. You don’t need to be a frontend expert. If you’re a strong programmer (any language) with basic HTML/CSS/JS knowledge, we trust you’ll pick up the rest on the job.
Responsibilities
- Build and style web pages that call our backend program
- Implement basic interactivity (buttons, forms, simple canvas drawing)
- Display data plots or images fetched from a server
Required Skills
- Strong programming ability in any language (C++, Python, Java, etc.)
- Familiarity with web fundamentals: HTML, CSS and JS
- Willingness to learn and experiment with new libraries/frameworks
Bonus (not mandatory)
- Basic experience with data visualization (Chart.js, D3, Plotly)
- Prior use of Git for version control
What You’ll Gain
- Hands-on experience bridging C++ backends with web UIs
- Mentorship in both backend and frontend technologies
- Flexibility to work at your own pace around your studies
Contact: peter.lysakovski@uni-heidelberg.de