Reinhard W. Schulte, MD, MS, DABR

My clinical expertise is in radiation oncology and medical physics applied to particle therapy. My academic education involved both physics and medicine, and, besides my professional certificate as a physician, I obtained an academic degree (doctorate in medicine, Dr. med.) from the University of Cologne, Germany. I also have a U.S. medical license from the Medical Board of California I am board-certified by the American Board of Radiology in Radiation Oncology (2012) and by the Specialty Board of Lower Saxony, Germany in Radiology (1992). After completing my radiology residency, involving training in both diagnostic and therapeutic radiology, in 1989, I became interested in proton therapy and applied for a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship (habilitation stipend) from the German Research Foundation (DFG). With that, I spent 20 months at the world’s first hospital-based proton treatment center in Loma Linda California. With permission from the German and U.S. governments, I was allowed to stay there and continue to increase experience in proton therapy and to solve prevailing problems with it using a combination of my physics and clinical experience. I quickly became aware of both the range uncertainty and the biological effectiveness problem in proton therapy, both needing reduction. This has become the major theme of my career as a physician-scientist working in the field of particle therapy. Over time, I have built an extensive network of collaborators and collaborations focusing on these topics of medical physics research and have worked with many institutions worldwide. My goal has always been to advance and share knowledge and to educate the next generation of scientists to continue the work I have started.