The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recognized the recipients of its 2025 Gold Medal awards and other high-profile honors during its recent Annual Meeting. ASTRO also recognized the recipients of its 2025 research grants and fellowships, including awards co-sponsored by patient, provider and industry partners. Photos of the awardees and grant recipients are available online.

ASTRO Gold Medal

ASTRO’s Gold Medal is the highest honor bestowed upon an ASTRO member, given annually to individuals who have made outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of radiation oncology through achievements in clinical patient care, research, teaching and service.

Four individuals received 2025 Gold Medals, including David Beyer, MD, FASTRO of Northern Arizona Healthcare, a private-practice leader who advanced prostate brachytherapy and shaped national payment and policy as an ASTRO Chair; Quynh-Thu Le, MD, FASTRO of Stanford University, a head and neck oncology authority and NRG Oncology leader driving national clinical trials and translational research to personalize therapy and mitigate the side effects of treatment; Lawrence Marks, MD, FASTRO of the University of North Carolina, an engineer-physician behind groundbreaking work on normal tissue injury, national radiation dose-tolerance guidelines, and safety and quality in clinical care; and Jatinder Palta, PhD, FASTRO of the Veterans Health Administration, a medical physicist who founded the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise–Radiation Oncology (IHE-RO) initiative and helped bring radiosurgery, and other treatment advances into clinical practice.

In the award’s 49th consecutive year, Drs. Beyer, Le, Marks and Palta join an exclusive group of 103 Gold Medalists. Read more about the 2025 awardees in ASTROnews and in tributes published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal).

ASTRO Honorary Member

ASTRO’s 2025 Honorary Member is adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology pioneer W. Archie Bleyer, MD. This award is the highest honor ASTRO bestows upon an individual in a discipline outside of radiation oncology, radiobiology and medical physics who has contributed to advancing the specialty. Read more about Dr. Bleyer in ASTROnews and a tribute in the Red Journal.

ASTRO Mentorship Award

ASTRO’s 2025 Mentorship Award recipients are Iris Gibbs, MD, FASTRO, Helen Shih, MD, MPH, FASTRO and Joachim Yahalom, MD, FASTRO. This award recognizes mentors in radiation oncology who demonstrate outstanding commitment to developing their mentees as clinicians, educators and researchers. Read more in ASTROnews.

ASTRO Annual Meeting Abstract Awards

More than 40 researchers received Annual Meeting abstract awards, which recognize the highest rated research at the meeting and highlight the work of residents and early-career professionals. Amar U. Kishan, MD, received the Steven A. Leibel Memorial Award given jointly by ASTRO and the American Board of Radiology (ABR) Foundation, and Souvik Sankar Das, MBBS of Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute received the International Abstract Award. A full list of recipients is available in the Red Journal, and details about their abstracts and presentations are available in the Annual Meeting portal.

Survivor Circle: Honoring Patients and Their Contributions

ASTRO’s Survivor Circle program recognizes contributions from patient support organizations, awarding more than $550,000 in grants to date. This year’s recipients include two organizations that provide cancer support services in California, Carter's Foundation and Latinas Contra Cancer. Read more about the Survivor Circle program and these organizations in ASTROnews, and read an update from last year’s Survivor Circle recipients on the ASTROblog.

Research Grants and Fellowships

ASTRO’s 2025 research grants and fellowships include awards co-sponsored by the American Cancer Society (ACS), the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) the LUNGevity Foundation, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) and the RTOG Foundation/NRG Oncology. These awards invest in the ideas and the career development of early-career scientists who are advancing cancer care and radiation medicine. Information on ASTRO's current research funding opportunities is available online.

• ACS-ASTRO Felix Feng, MD, Clinician Scientist Development Grant: Grace Blitzer, MD, “Pilot trial investigating the role of circulating tumor DNA as a risk stratification tool to guide adjuvant therapy in endometrial cancer”

• ASTRO-ACS Clinician Scientist Development Grant: Lydia Wilson, PhD, “Novel functional imaging to predict surgical side effects for lung cancer patients”

• ASTRO-BCRF Emerging Investigator Award: Zhen Guo, PhD, “Targeting CD47 to mitigate radiation-induced cardiotoxicity in breast cancer”

• ASTRO Residents/Fellows in Radiation Oncology Seed Grants: Bill Diplas, MD, PhD, “Targeting alternative lengthening of telomeres;” Amy Wisdom, MD, PhD, “Mechanisms of antigen presentation and immune evasion in glioblastoma”

• ASTRO-AAPM Physics Residents/Postdoctoral Fellows Seed Grants: Harkiran Kaur Kooner, PhD, “AIRTox – Airway Imaging for Radiation-induced Toxicity;” Jose Antonio Lopez-Valverde, PhD, “Characterization of the internalization dynamics of AGuIX®/AGuIX-Bi and their role on the mechanism of action of the radiosensitization effect

• ASTRO-LUNGevity Residents/Fellows in Radiation Oncology Seed Grant: Adam Grippin, MD, PhD, “mRNA vaccines and therapeutic radiation for non-small cell lung cancer”

• ASTRO-RTOG-NRG Oncology Health Care Access Fellowship: Deborah Marshall, MD

Several individuals also received awards from the Radiation Oncology Institute (ROI), ASTRO’s 501c(3) foundation, in recognition of outstanding published research:

• ROI Publication Excellence Award recipients included John Nikitas, MD, for “The interplay between acute and late toxicity among patients receiving prostate radiotherapy: an individual patient data meta-analysis of six randomized trials;” Rituraj Upadhyay, MD, for “Boswellia serrata for cerebral radiation necrosis after radiosurgery for brain metastases;” and Ethan Ludmir, MD, Alexander Sherry, MD, and Chad Tang, MD, for “Addition of metastasis-directed therapy to systemic therapy for oligometastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (EXTEND): A multicenter, randomized phase II trial.”

• The ROI-Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology (ARRO) Health Care Access Publication Award was given to Jacob Hogan, MD, for “Radiotherapy utilization in traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage” Read more about these awards in The Visionary, ROI’s newsletter.

ABOUT ASTRO

The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with more than 10,000 members who are physicians, nurses, biologists, physicists, radiation therapists, dosimetrists and other health care professionals who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. Radiation therapy contributes to 40% of global cancer cures, and more than a million Americans receive radiation treatments for cancer each year. For information on radiation therapy, visit RTAnswers.org. To learn more about ASTRO, visit our website and media center and follow us on social media.