9 November 2020
Dr Professor Eliseo Vano has become the first ever winner of the BIR Medal for Outstanding International Achievement for his extensive services to the field of radiation safety.
The Medal is a brand new and highly prestigious award for an individual who has made such a major contribution over an extended period that significant positive effects will be felt at international level.
The award was presented at the BIR Annual Congress on 6 November 2020.
Professor Vano is a full Professor of Medical Physics at the Faculty of Medicine of the Complutense University in Madrid and Head of the Medical Physics Service at the San Carlos University Hospital. He has been at the forefront of radiation protection at an international level for many years, instrumental in IAEA programmes of optimisation in radiation protection for cardiologists in South America and has been intimately involved in the IAEA education programmes for radiation protection in fluoroscopy. Partly as a result of his work and involvement described below, international standards for radiation dose to the eye have been amended. He has also been active in the IAEA educational programmes in Asia.
He is the immediate past-Chair of the ICRP Committee 3 [Radiological Protection in Medicine] and is currently a member of the ICRP Main Commission. He was a lead author/contributor to recent ICRP publications that are shaping the worldwide approach to Diagnostic Reference Levels and radiation protection in medicine more generally [most recently ‘Occupational radiological protection in interventional procedures 2018’, ‘Diagnostic Reference Levels in Medical Imaging 2017’].
Currently he sits on the CIRSE Radiation Protection Sub-Committee and is a lead contributor to current international guidelines [sometimes jointly with the US Society of Interventional Radiology] on radiation protection in interventional radiology and cardiology.
He is also a member of the European Society of Radiology’s Steering Committee for its EuroSafe Imaging initiative and as such organises and presents regularly at the European Congress of radiology. In this role he Chairs the sub-group for ‘Dosimetry in Imaging in Clinical Practice’.
His bibliography is extensive and he has engaged effectively with the clinical community as a physicist providing the most excellent example of multi-disciplinary working both within Spain and internationally.
