Question: What is your best discovery in the past few years?

Suzie Sheehy answered on 20 Mar 2011:

Since I started research in my current field (particle accelerators) in 2007, I’ve been looking at how you can design new types of particle accelerators for different applications.

During my PhD I was looking at how you can make a machine for cancer treatment using protons or carbon ions (sometimes called proton therapy or hadron therapy). The treatment already exists and the idea is that the protons or other particles are much more effective at treating cancers (especially hard to reach ones). About 70,000 people have been treated with this type of therapy and it’s rapidly expanding, but it is really expensive because you need quite a big particle accelerator to do it! (One the size of a very large room!) Currently there are 22 places in the world to get treatment, there is one in the UK at Clatterbridge but it can only treat eyes as it only has a very small accelerator. For full body treatment you need a bigger one – the NHS is looking into this right now!

So our idea was to come up with a smaller, simpler, cheaper accelerator to use for treatment. My main ‘discoveries’ were two different things: first, I found out that the design that already existed couldn’t actually be built (!) because it was really really sensitive to any errors. That could have been really disheartening, except that together with some of the other members of the collaboration we came up with a new design, a new way of doing things that avoided the problem with errors and still meant that we could have a simpler and cheaper machine that the one that existed.

Sorry it took me a while to explain – sometimes ‘discoveries’ aren’t quite what they seem!