Barry Berman Memorial Lecture Series

In 2011, The Barry Berman Memorial Lecture Series was created through a generous gift by one of Professor Berman’s close collaborators, Professor Cedric Yu, a faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Radiation Oncology. Professors Berman and Yu worked together under a National Institutes of Health-funded project on radiation cancer therapy. The goal of the lecture series is to inspire young people to study medical physics, by inviting internationally prominent scientists to speak on the application of physics principles to medicine. 

Professor Berman joined the Physics Department in the Fall of 1985, already an accomplished physicist, having done ground-breaking studies of atomic nuclei. His intellectual capacities and love of science led him to contribute to a vast array of topics, including fundamental research in medium- and high-energy nuclear physics, especially few-body nuclear physics, as well as applied physics in lunar geology, medical diagnostics and cancer radiotherapy, materials characterization and identification, and radiological and nuclear threat reduction. He was elected Chair of the Physics Department multiple times and elected Columbian Professor of the Natural and Mathematical Sciences in 1998. Professor Berman was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1972 and authored or co-authored 244 refereed publications in physics, 430 papers in total.

Past Berman Lectures 

April 10th, 2025
Dr. Andrea J. Liu, University of Pennsylvania
Tunable Matter

April 11th, 2024 
Dr. Lei Ren, University of Maryland
The Quantum Leap: Bridging AI, Physics, and Medicine for Revolutionary Innovations in Radiation Therapy

October 22nd, 2020
Dr. Xin Chen, Johns Hopkins University
Asymmetry from symmetry or symmetry from asymmetry?

April 11th, 2019
Dr. Thomas Bortfield, Harvard Medical School 
Proton Therapy 

April 19th, 2018
Dr. Taekjip Ha, Johns Hopkins University
Revisiting and Repurposing the Double Helix

April 20th, 2017
Dr. John Wong, Johns Hopkins University
Technology Advances in Radiation Oncology in the Age of Big Data

April 3rd, 2014
Dr. Arup Chakraborty, MIT
How to Hit HIV Where it Hurts

April 25th, 2013
Dr. John Boone, University of California, Davis
Medical Physics and the Development of a New Way to Detect Breast Cancer