Dr. Katherine Baker has joined the Northern Illinois University Institute for Neutron Therapy at Fermilab (NIUINT at Fermilab) as the new medical director. Both Dr. Baker and Dr. Kurubarahalli Saroja, who will be assisting and advising Dr. Baker, are members of the Nuclear Oncology Service Corporation.

A Wisconsin native, Dr. Baker attended medical school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed a residency at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Neutron therapy, she says, "was something I had always learned about in my residency. When I was doing my training, Dr Saroja would come over and give us lectures about it. It was something all the residents in my program were exposed to." Her appointment at NIUINT at Fermilab is her first directorship since becoming a nuclear oncologist. "Right now the most standard area for neutron therapy is with salivary gland tumors and sarcomas; we can really see big benefits there," she says. "A potential area that's not as well developed would be to look at neutron therapy in glioblastomas." NIUINT at Fermilab currently treats salivary gland tumors, advanced prostate cancer, head and neck cancers, melanoma, and sarcomas, while the effectiveness of neutron therapy for glioblastomas (brain tumors) may be a possible focus of future research.

When she's not busy with work, much of Dr. Baker's free time involves her husband and her three children, ages 7, 5, and 11 months. She also likes to cook, especially Italian, and "to exercise when I get a chance, biking, hiking, and swimming," she says.