Seminar: Radiation and Health Effects

Join us for a seminar led by former Professor Gerry Thomas OBE, exploring how radiation affects human health.

Topics covered at the seminar will include:

• Types and sources of radiation
• Natural background doses
• Radiation harm models
• Health consequences of nuclear accidents, including Chornobyl and Fukushima
• Putting UK legal and regulatory dose limits into perspective by comparison with doses causing health effects.

The seminar will be followed by a networking reception.

Agenda:

Speaker: Gerry Thomas OBE

Gerry Thomas is a former Professor of Molecular Pathology at Imperial College, and she established and directed the Chornobyl Tissue Bank in 1998 in response to the scientific interest in studying the molecular biology of thyroid cancer post-Chornobyl.

Her Imperial research focused on the molecular pathology of thyroid and breast cancer, tissue banking and biospecimen science and the health effects of radiation. Professor Thomas also led the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues module on Imperial’s  MSc  course in Genomic Medicine.

In the wider medical field, Professor Thomas was the Director of  the Imperial College Healthcare Tissue Bank and was the Scientific Director of the Wales Cancer Bank.  She was Clinical Director of the West London Genome Medicine Centre, part of the 100,000 genomes project.

Professor Thomas was awarded an OBE for her services to Science and Public Health in 2019. After her award, she was appointed to the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, an independent advisory body providing scrutiny and advice to the Government on issues related to the management of radioactive waste in the UK.