February 21, 2025
By Chloe Arrington

Graduate student Madison McKinnon has once again demonstrated the caliber and excellence of students in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

McKinnon, who is a first-year master's student in the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics program, recently won the George Sherouse Award for Trainee and Early Career Investigators, awarded by the Southeast Chapter of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (SEAAPM). 

This prize is named in honor of George W. Sherouse, who is remembered as a force of nature in the field of medical physics and an enthusiastic supporter of students and trainees.

McKinnon developed a 3D-printed quality assurance tool to verify the accuracy of the motion management system used in Gamma Knife frameless stereotactic radiosurgery, a type of radiation therapy.

"The motion management system is a crucial feature of our program, as it alerts us if a patient has moved out of tolerance during radiation therapy treatment and pauses the radiation beam while the patient is outside the allowed tolerance," said McKinnon.

Despite its importance, there is no dedicated equipment to evaluate the motion management system. McKinnon designed a platform that attaches to the treatment headrest and allows the medical physicist to assess the motion monitoring system to one-hundredth millimeter precision.

As part of the award, McKinnon received a $1,000 travel honorarium to present her research at the SEAAPM meeting in Knoxville, TN, earlier this month.