Katia Parodi receives the Glocker Medal.

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The German Society for Medical Physics (DGMP) has awarded the Glocker Medal to Professor Katia Parodi, Chair of Medical Physics in LMU’s Faculty of Physics. The society’s highest distinction was presented to Parodi at the 57th DGMP Annual Meeting in Bamberg on 17 September 2026, in recognition of her longstanding contributions to medical physics in research and practice.

One focus of Parodi’s research is image-guided, high-precision radiotherapy using protons and heavy ions. This form of cancer treatment allows the radiation dose to be delivered precisely to the tumor, helping to spare the surrounding healthy tissue. However, this requires the range of the ion beams within the body to be known as accurately as possible.

Parodi pioneered the development of imaging methods to verify this range directly within the patient, initially using positron emission tomography (PET). Today, she and her team are investigating new radiation sources, detector technologies and imaging techniques to further improve the precision of tumor irradiation while deepening our understanding of the biological effects of ion radiation. This journey from physical precision towards a more comprehensive understanding of biological effects is also the subject of Parodi’s Glocker Lecture, entitled “Beyond the Bragg Peak: A journey from physical precision to biological understanding”.

“Receiving the Glocker Medal means a great deal to me, both personally and professionally”, says Katia Parodi. “I see it as recognition of the commitment that my team and I have shown to advancing radiotherapy and to educating and mentoring the next generation of researchers and clinical medical physicists.”

Parodi received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2016 for her research. In 2024, she was named a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). She has published more than 300 scientific papers and has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology since 2021.

Parodi has also maintained close ties with the DGMP for many years. She served on its board from 2015 to 2020 and was the society’s president in 2017 and 2018.

The German Society for Medical Physics has awarded the Glocker Medal annually to one of its members since 2002. The medal recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to medical physics in research and practice over many years. It is named after Professor Richard Glocker (1890 - 1978), the DGMP’s first honorary member and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s last doctoral student.

In addition to Katia Parodi’s Glocker Medal, two recent doctoral graduates of the faculty also received awards: Dr. Tianxue Du was awarded one of the Wolfgang Schlegel Scholarships offered by the DGMP, while Dr. Ines Simone Butz received the Behnken Berger Prize from the Behnken Berger Foundation for her work entitled „Improving Relative Stopping power Calibration in X-ray Treatment Planning CT Using Sparse Proton Radiography“.