Duke University Medical Physics Graduate Program

Mingyue Chen, MS, successfully defended her Scholarship Project titled “Reinforcement Learning for Automated IMRT Treatment Planning: Mathematical Formulation for Optimized Reward Function Design” on April 10, 2026. Guided by Jackie Wu, PhD and Yang Sheng, PhD, this marks an important milestone in Mingyue’s academic journey. Congratulations, Mingyue!

Big news from Duke Medical Physics! 🎉
We’re thrilled to celebrate an incredible achievement—14 of our graduate students matched to top residency programs across the country in the 2026 cycle!
From radiation therapy (RT) to diagnostic imaging (DI), this talented group of MS and PhD students is heading to some of the nation’s leading institutions. Their success reflects not only their hard work and dedication, but also the strength of the training and mentorship at Duke University.
👏 Join us in congratulating our outstanding graduates.
We are so proud of you and can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make in the field of medical physics!
Read more: https://medicalphysics.duke.edu/news/duke-medical-physics-graduate-students-achieve-outstanding-residency-match-success/

Warm congratulations to Runhe Tan, MS (Advisor: Kyle Lafata, PhD) on successfully defending his Master’s thesis on March 27, 2026. His thesis, “Investigating Intra-tumoral Heterogenity Driven by Nutrient Dynamics and Radiotherapy Using an In-silico Avascular Tumor Growth Model,” focused on developing computational tumor growth models to study how nutrient dynamics and radiation response shape intra-tumoral heterogeneity, and on translating those patterns into image-based features for radiomics analysis.