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Radiation Oncology Training and Fellowship Programs

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The Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center is committed to providing training for new generations of physicians and scientists, and is a major teaching site for Harvard Medical School.

All staff in the Department of Radiation Oncology share this commitment and are dedicated to training future professionals in the field of radiation oncology.

    Medical Student Education

    The Department of Radiation Oncology welcomes medical students to visit and observe physicians in a clinical setting. Students in their third or fourth year of medical school may register for a four-week elective rotation in radiation oncology through Harvard Medical School.

    Current Harvard students may register for course number RA502M.JB. Non-Harvard students interested in applying for the rotation should contact the Harvard Registrar at 617-432-1515 to find out about the Harvard Exchange Clerk Program. Learn more about the  Harvard Exchange Clerk Program.

    For more information, or to arrange a visit to the department, please contact the radiation oncology medical student course director, Paul Nguyen, MD, at pnguyen@lroc.harvard.edu.

    Residency Program

    The Harvard Radiation Oncology Program is a four-year, ACGME accredited medical residency training program at Harvard Medical School, which includes three clinical years organized into three-month rotation periods at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Children's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Medical Center, along with one research year.

    For more information, please contact Barry Mendelsohn at barry_mendelsohn@dfci.harvard.edu.

    Clinical Fellowship Program

    The Department of Radiation Oncology offers two fellowship programs in clinical radiation oncology. Each of these 12-month, full-time appointments focuses on an area of sub-specialization. Our current programs are:

    1. Advanced Adult Central Nervous System Radiosurgery/Radiotherapy
    2. Brachytherapy

    Fellowships are clinically focused and also include a clinical research component. Radiation oncology fellowships are intended to prepare candidates to take up sub-specialization positions in teaching institutions.

    Interested candidates should email their CV, along with their program of interest, to shilfer@bwh.harvard.edu.

    Fellowships in Medical Physics

    Postdoctoral fellowships in medical physics last two-and-a-half years and consist of supervised research, medical physics education and clinical training in radiotherapy physics. Fellows generally have PhDs in physics or engineering, but no medical physics experience is necessary for entrance into the program.

    Fellows have the opportunity to join faculty physicists in directed research and development projects leading to presentation of results at national and international conferences, as well as publications in scientific journals. Fellows attend didactic lectures in medical physics weekly, and seminars on current research from internal and external speakers.

    For clinical radiotherapy training, they will rotate through the various clinical routines to gain practical experience. Our goal is to prepare our postdoctoral fellows to become outstanding researchers and clinical physicists.

    For more information, email carolyn_dahlberg@dfci.harvard.edu.

    Residency in Medical Physics

    The Harvard Medical Physics Residency Program consists of a first year of supervised research and medical physics education followed by two years of formal clinical training in radiotherapy physics.

    Residents generally have PhDs in physics or engineering, but no medical physics experience is necessary for entrance into the program. During the research year, fellows have the opportunity to join faculty physicists in directed research and development projects leading to presentation of results at national and international conferences, as well as publications in scientific journals.

    They also attend didactic lectures in medical physics weekly, and seminars on current research from internal and external speakers. For the two subsequent years of clinical radiotherapy training, residents rotate regularly through all clinical radiation therapy routines to gain practical experience.

    Our goal is to prepare our residents to become outstanding researchers and clinical medical physicists.