ASTRO extends heartiest congratulations to the 2025 ASTRO Gold Medal awardees: David Beyer, MD, FASTRO, Northern Arizona Healthcare; Quynh-Thu Le, MD, FASTRO, Stanford University School of Medicine; Lawrence Marks, MD, FASTRO, University of North Carolina School of Medicine; and Jatinder Palta, PhD, FASTRO, National Radiation Oncology Program Veterans Health Administration.

This year’s Gold Medal awardees have some interesting commonalities. Each awardee took a bit of a jagged path (one described his career akin to a pinball machine) to land at radiation oncology, motivated by a drive for the science and a commitment to provide the best possible care. All spoke of inspiring mentors who contributed to important career pivots in roles and research. Two came into the field with engineering backgrounds, with organized problem-solving a critical part of their motivation. When asked about the future, awardees shared a sense of RO having the opportunity to level up with the opportunities artificial intelligence brings to the field.

Learn more about each winner’s journey to this remarkable designation and join us in celebrating them at the Awards Ceremony on September 30 at this year’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

David Beyer, MD, FASTRO

Prior to being premed, David Beyer, MD, FASTRO, was an electrical engineer. He started out in medical school with the aim of becoming a cardiologist but landed in radiation oncology after accompanying a patient with a spinal cord emergency to a radiation therapy appointment. Prior to that, he did not know the field existed, but upon entering the clinic, he and the environment just clicked. “The whiz bang stuff and the humanistic side of why I wanted to become a doctor in the first place” was the right balance for him. The then chair of the University of Arizona had an incredible way of interacting with patients. When Dr. Beyer witnessed him, he determined that that was who he wanted to be “when he grew up.” And so he did but with his own unique contributions.

Dr. Beyer described his career as a pinball machine, moving in one direction, hitting a bumper causing the lights to flash and bells to ring, and then careening off in a new direction. For example, upon finishing his internal medicine residency, he had a brief academic appointment. But he found himself most comfortable as a private practitioner, specifically in freestanding centers, where he has spent the majority of his career. He breaks his career down into two major phases, the first focused on practice, research and publishing in prostate brachytherapy especially in the 1980s and 1990s. As a private practice doctor, he was proud to lead in innovation in this area, some industry-based, some RTOG, with private practices pushing for prostate brachytherapy and leading to research opportunities and publication.

Dr. Beyer embarked on a second career trajectory when he became interested in health policy. He was fascinated by how the system works, observing the influences of regulatory and governmental pressures and accreditation, and where those factors intersect with practice. Ushered into the domain by a few senior physicians, he became involved in policy in the areas of regulatory code utilization, and the CPT development process. His brain quickly connected with the way these processes worked. He learned the challenges of and the process of getting through the AMA RVS Update Committee (RUC), and consequently contributed at ASTRO through committees, councils, and ultimately serving as president in 2015-2016. He published in the Red Journal on health policy issues during his tenure, navigating the government relations side of ASTRO’s role. He bridged multiple perspectives, enriching important conversations and ultimately policy.

When considering this year’s Annual Meeting theme, Dr. Beyer conveyed his strong sense that what’s old is new. Earlier in his career, he had heard mention of many of the nonmalignant diseases to be discussed this year, but where RT as treatment didn’t take off at that time. “That time may be now, to explore areas like arthritis where understanding degree of function is critical and what we do best as physicians,” commented Dr. Beyer. “And the way the field has evolved with the technology of 3D conformal and IMRT and contouring, as physicians we will spend less time in front of a computer and more time in clinic spending with patients.” He expresses his excitement in AI freeing the field up to interact and be more hands on. This was one of his motivations for practicing brachytherapy, as a very hands-on practice for which delegation is not an option. He hopes that future generations retain that passion of being in the room, engaging with patients. On behalf of the field, he looks forward to being free of some of the current tasks in contouring that will enable evolving the field in other areas.

Dr. Beyer is thrilled to receive this honor, as he’s always believed in the importance of organized medicine and physicians belonging to societies to represent their needs. And he declares that we can make a difference wherever we are, private practice or academia or other platforms. Dr. Beyer also wanted to encourage a culture that frees up time to colleagues to participate in Society efforts. He acknowledges that he would not have been able to participate in ASTRO if his professional partners hadn’t been supportive of contributing, volunteering, to create that culture of a multi-faceted physician from anywhere, USA.

Quynh-Thu Le, MD, FASTRO

Initially, Quynh-Thu Le, MD, FASTRO, planned to pursue a career in internal medicine, but while at the University of California San Francisco was drawn to the field of oncology. Her medical school peers suggested that a rotation in radiation oncology would prepare her for an upcoming medicine clerkship. At the time, William Wara, MD, was vice-chair of the department, and his mentorship along with the collegial dynamic of the field led to a transformative decision to pursue radiation oncology. She was impressed with how evidence-based the practice is, coupled with the dedication she witnessed in ROs caring for cancer patients.

Dr. Le specialized further upon meeting Karen Fu, MD, FASTRO, a mentor who influenced Dr. Le’s commitment to head and neck cancer. In addition, Dr. Fu’s commitment to clinical trials inspired Dr. Le’s own clinical focus and involvement with RTOG. Richard Hoppe, MD, FASTRO, supported her early research endeavors upon joining Stanford faculty, all the way to her position as department chair, which she has held since 2011. In the research domain, Amato Giaccia, MD, opened his lab to her, mentoring her in basic and translational research, supported additionally by Albert Koong, MD, PhD, FASTRO, who taught her essential lab techniques and contributed to innovative research ideas. Dr. Le humbly attributed Stanford’s success as one of the strongest academic departments in the U.S. to the collaborative nature of its individuals, but undoubtedly her own leadership has been a factor. Always acknowledging those who came before her, Dr. Le also was grateful to Wally Curran, MD, who preceded her in leadership of the Head and Neck Cancer Committee of NRG Oncology. This position led to advancing critical research in head and neck cancer and paved the way for Dr. Le’s role as co-chair of the NRG Oncology Group.

Providing the best possible care for her patients, especially those battling head and neck cancer, has always been Dr. Le’s primary motivation. She acknowledges that while treatments can be effective, they are often accompanied with significant short- and long-term toxicities and are not always curative. Knowing this, she has sought to figure out how to determine the most appropriate treatment for each individual while minimizing side effects. When starting out in 1997, she quickly determined the constraints of their limited clinical tools, and that lack moved her into the domain of lab training and research, specifically to identify and develop new targeted therapies. Almost three decades later, she is proud of the progress that has been made, fueled by wanting to enhance patient outcomes and contribute to field advancements.

Considering this year’s meeting theme, Dr. Le mused, “While we routinely use radiation to treat cancer patients, our fundamental understanding of how radiation interacts with the complex human body is still evolving.” She noted that while the same dose of radiation can produce different effects on different cell types, the manner of delivery and dose rates also influence radiation’s impact. She also noted the underutilized anti-inflammatory effects of very low radiation doses, which may be helpful for nonmalignant conditions like osteoarthritis. She anticipates that the NCI Radiation Oncology Biology Integration Network (ROBIN) U54 grants will help advance our understanding of the biological effects over time along with its interactions with other therapies. Ultimately the end goal is to use tools more intelligently to benefit patients.

Dr. Le views the future of radiation oncology as bright, noting that the current wave of talented individuals at the peak of their careers brings with them a wealth of innovative ideas and creativity that will drive the discipline forward. She is especially excited about the ongoing exploration of the diverse biological effects of external beam radiation, to enable use of this modality more intelligently and to develop new treatment indications. In addition, expanding research and collaborations with nuclear medicine in theranostics hold great potential for pioneering therapies for various solid tumors. She points out however, that as we advance, it is critical to stay mindful of long-term impacts of treatment and the importance of actively seeking ways to mitigate any adverse effects. “By doing so, we can ensure that our progress translates into meaningful benefits for those we serve.”

Dr. Le expressed deep gratitude for her immediate family, husband Jim Toth and sons Bryan and Geoffrey, and her parents Mr. and Mrs. Cong Xuan Le along with her siblings. She appreciates the Gold Medal as a profound honor, representing recognition from her peers and the broader RO community, for not just her individual efforts but also that of the entire Stanford RO Department and the NRG Oncology Group. “The Gold Medal serves as a motivation to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation to support our cancer patients and to inspire the next generation of ROs to strive for excellence in their work.”

Lawrence Marks, MD, FASTRO

The career path of Lawrence Marks, MD, FASTRO, began with a love of math, a passion for counting, and measuring and building structures, a path that he thought would lead to becoming a math teacher. His father wanted him to be a doctor. Meanwhile, his love of math expanded to chemistry, and while nothing was deliberate, his ability to adapt along with some lucky strokes (according to him) led him to engineering school and later to become a radiation oncologist. So, first he became a chemical engineer. For one summer. Disliking it, his father again suggested medical school. Once in medical school in Rochester, he wasn’t so keen on medicine, as it was very qualitative and he missed the math and physics. His then-girlfriend-now-wife returned from class one day, sharing that she had attended a lecture given by a radiation oncologist. Heeding her encouragement, he learned more about radiation oncology, discovering its perfect combination of math and physics. His growing enthusiasm found more roots upon meeting the legendary Philip Rubin, MD, FASTRO (who was at Rochester). Another stroke of “luck” — as Dr. Rubin became a wonderful mentor and friend, cementing Dr. Marks’ commitment to medicine.

Within rad onc, Dr. Marks is interested especially in using 3D planning tools to better understand and prevent radiation-associated normal tissue injury. During residency, he had the opportunity to work with some of the early 3D planning proton tools. In his early days at Duke, he helped build in their 3D planning program, working with gifted physicists. This was an exciting time, using math, especially geometry, to determine optimal beam orientations. Dr. Marks took this moment to wave his protractor from his suit jacket pocket and shared that he used to keep one in each of his white coats, ensuring his vigilant readiness to do “3D planning work” whenever the need arose.

Within the realm of normal tissue injury, Dr. Marks’ interests in the lung were nurtured by his fruitful interactions with Dr. Rubin, Noah Choi, MD, and Ronald Jaszczak, PhD. Dr. Jaszczak was a pioneer in this imaging tool, and he collaborated with Dr. Marks to use SPECT imaging to study regional lung injury in human patients. While at Duke, he also had access to terrific mentors, including Ed Halperin, MD, who gave Dr. Marks terrific advice to “focus on taking good care of your patients, and the meaningful clinical research questions will become obvious to you.”

Following that principle, Dr. Marks notes that several of his main research foci stemmed from the needs of individual patients. He remembers the first person for whom he used 3D planning to put a heart block in her left breast tangent fields. She was experiencing heart failure after receiving high-dose chemo for breast cancer, but Dr. Marks felt that she really needed post-mastectomy radiation. That one patient led their group to use heart blocks in hundreds of patients and spurned several research grants and multiple publications. Ironically, Dr. Marks’ activities as a breast cancer physician resulted not from a coordinated plan but rather from his covering the breast service during his senior partner’s sabbatical. A little flexibility led to great opportunities.

A closer look at Dr. Marks’ work reveals his main drivers: A strong desire to apply math and engineering principles to improve care; to better understand and prevent normal tissue injury; and the desire to make clinical systems more reliable and safer for patients and staff. He has long been troubled by the chaos that sometimes occurs during clinical care. Because he was an engineer first, his penchant for order and predictability has spilled over into medicine to the benefit of the field. He notes that radiation oncology is relatively very organized, but in general, medicine can be chaotic, and he hates to see frustrated patients and providers.

This needling intuition compelled him to get involved in quality improvement decades ago. While leading the Rad Onc QI committee at Duke, they noted increased error rates when new treatment machines were installed. After digging deeper into this experience and learning that this was a recognized phenomenon that often happens when new technology is implemented, Dr. Marks became more interested in structural and environmental factors associated with errors. When he became department chair at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 2008, he brought engineers in to help systematically apply industrial engineering principles to improve their clinical system’s reliability and quality. Their timing was fortuitous as a series of subsequent NY Times articles highlighted quality and safety issues in the field. Dr. Marks played an important role in ASTRO’s efforts to address issues raised, e.g., serving as a board member leading ASTRO’s new Clinical Care and Quality Council, helping to create RO-ILS, authoring part of ASTRO’s report “Safety is No Accident,” and organizing and speaking at many ASTRO meetings focused on quality.

Dr. Marks’ interests in normal tissue injury and quality explain his leadership roles in QUANTEC, HyTEC and PENTEC. These efforts summarize dose/volume/outcome data for normal tissues in a clinically useful manner, with the goal of helping planners and physicians to reduce the risk of normal tissue injury, and improve the therapeutic ratio of radiation therapy.

Dr. Marks abides by numerous practices that make him an effective collaborator. In the team setting, he makes a habit to acknowledge all teammates, especially the non-physicians who enable ROs to do their work. He understands that being a physician is a privilege, and that one’s success depends not only on their own efforts, but also on the efforts of others, and often a bit of luck well beyond anyone’s control. Further, he habitually takes opportunities to give positive feedback or say a nice word (even if it is only good morning).

Noting this year’s theme, Dr. Marks shared that “there are growing opportunities to use radiation therapy aggressively for both localized and metastatic cancer. Radiation works! It is almost like magic. When applied intelligently, there is tremendous potential. In many settings, we can achieve outcomes at least as good as, and often better than, what can be achieved with surgery, and with less invasiveness. But, it’s not about pitting one treatment against another. It’s about doing the research and figuring out what is in the patient’s interest.”

This healthy awe and respect for the treatment coupled with his warm care for patients and colleagues have ushered him to this point today of winning the gold medal. Dr. Marks revealed that he has been referred to at UNC as the CEO, Chief Enthusiasm Officer. An unsurprising moniker, his infectious energy is abundant, and his relationships have reaped progress for the field.

When asked about career highlights, he reflected: “The biggest highlight is the wonderful people I have gotten to know and work with at multiple institutions. Collaborators and Friends. And, being inspired by our patients — who routinely demonstrate tremendous courage under much adversity — has been a highlight. They give us perspectives to our lives.” Dr. Marks is also indebted to his terrific colleagues at UNC for their hard work, innovative spirit, partnership, collaborations and friendship. “Being the department chair at UNC was a terrific honor and great fun; we have a great group of people there.” He is humbled and grateful to his wife Caryn (an anesthesiologist), their three sons, two daughters-in-law and one grandchild.

Jatinder Palta, PhD, FASTRO

For over 45 years, Jatinder Palta, PhD, FASTRO, has had an illustrious career as a medical physicist, most notably as the first director to lead the Medical Physics Institute (MPI) within the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). Just last year, Dr. Palta retired from his position as Chairman of Medical Physics in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Virginia Commonwealth University, in tandem with serving as National Chief of Physics for the National Radiation Oncology Program of Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

This career began as a spark of fascination in graduate school by the application of physics in cancer care, having interacted with a physicist working in a radiation oncology department. Up to that point, Dr. Palta knew he wanted to be on the applied field side of physics, and the team approach further intrigued him, leading to a post doc at MD Anderson in radiation oncology. Dr. Palta deeply appreciates how radiation oncology exemplifies a collaborative approach, in which members of the care team include radiation oncologists, nurses, physicists, dosimetrists, and radiation therapists, with distinct roles and responsibilities. “As a medical physicist I cannot think of another specialty in medicine in which I would have used my scientific knowledge and professional skills as widely and effectively as in radiation oncology.”

Furthermore, the opportunity to help the most vulnerable patient population cemented his motivation for the field. His mentor at MD Anderson shared that working in this field is not about statistics. One mistake is one too many in radiation. For the individual, it is the individual’s life being impacted. With that in mind, Dr. Palta has been driven to do his best for each and every patient.

His academic career brought him through MD Anderson, Jefferson Medical School and Saint Jude, to name a few. His vast research interests have included radiation dosimetry, quality assurance, clinical beam characteristics, IMRT, IGRT and medical informatics. He has authored or co-authored five books and over 160 peer reviewed papers on these topics.

As a researcher and academic medical physicist, his most professionally fulfilling accomplishment has been leading the development and clinical implementation of new technical innovations in both planning and delivery of radiotherapy safely, efficiently and effectively. Starting from radiosurgery in the 1990s to IMRT, IGRT, SBRT, and proton therapy in the last two decades, he has worked with academic peers to organize specialty courses and practicums in ASTRO and AAPM for community-based radiation oncologists and clinical physicists. He started the interconnectivity and interoperability initiative in radiation oncology, called IHE-RO, to facilitate streamlined clinical workflow in radiation oncology. In his position at the VA, he has focused on efforts to prospectively create structure data in radiation oncology which will help in quality surveillance, outcome assessment, and robust implementation of AI applications in routine clinical practice. With all these endeavors, his motivational mantra is: “every cancer patient deserves the best radiation therapy anywhere” — out in the community or at an academic center. Therefore, he has always strived to do his best in research, education and training of medical physicists and radiation oncologists.

Dr. Palta extrapolates that the ability to create big data in radiation oncology, radiomics, and genomics is helping radiation oncology move toward personalized treatment plans based on individual patient characteristics, including tumor biology, response to treatment, and risk factors. He also views radiation oncology to be uniquely positioned as the poster child for creating big data in medicine, as the only specialty with both clinical and technical capabilities of creating structured data essential for personalized treatment of cancer patients. He has been hugely involved in this effort for the last 10 years, which was one of his motivations for joining the VA, with a framework for big data to be used as a decision support system. Medical physicists are the bridge to understand the technology alongside the clinical information.

As for his family, not surprisingly, Dr. Palta’s daughter is a radiation oncologist. Upon starting her residency at Duke, he shared three important things for her to remember: 1) The patient is the main focus. 2) This medicine is a team medicine, and everyone is relying on the physician as the leader of the team. 3) Each team member needs to both observe and understand how well the patient is doing. When Dr. Palta visited his daughter, he received numerous testimonials from her colleagues on the remarkable doctor she is. He took this as an indicator that one committed person, whether as a parent or team lead, can shape the whole culture.

In closing, Dr. Palta shared: “Receiving the Gold Medal means the world to me and my family who have supported my academic and professional pursuits over the last four decades unreservedly. I am also humbled by the recognition of my peers for small contributions that I have made over the years to improve the quality and safety of radiotherapy and in training and educating the next generation of medical physicists and radiation oncologists.” 

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Jennifer Jang, MHS, ASTRO Communications