Graduates Find Success as Nation Faces a Shortage of Radiation Safety Specialists
04/01/2025
By Katharine Webster
Aliyah Welker ’22 had never heard of health physics when she started at UMass Lowell. Neither had Cassia Fontes ’22, ’23.
Yet the two former classmates, who chose the radiological health physics option within the physics major, are now working in the high-demand field, which involves protecting workers, the public and the environment from hazardous levels of radiation in settings as varied as hospitals, universities, nuclear reactors, national laboratories and fusion energy startups.
Both say they got the best possible training at UMass Lowell, thanks to the top-notch faculty and range of facilities on campus where they could get hands-on experience: the research reactor, particle accelerator, nuclear forensics and radiochemistry facilities, neutron activation analysis lab, health imaging lab, and multiple research labs where faculty use radioactive isotopes, X-rays and lasers.
“UMass Lowell is probably the best school to go to in the country if you want to go for health physics,” says Welker, who interned with UML’s Radiation Safety Office and at UMass Memorial Medical Center before graduating and taking a job with the Rhode Island Nuclear Science Center. “You can get real-world experience, no matter what aspect of health physics you want to do.”
Fontes agrees. A first-generation college student, she got a work-study job in the Radiation Safety Office and had two external paid internships as an undergraduate, one at a cancer treatment center and the other at Idaho National Laboratory.
She completed her master’s degree in one extra year, thanks to a scholarship from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. After turning down a job offer from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Fontes moved to the Seattle area for a job at TerraPower, a nuclear reactor and research company whose founders include Bill Gates.
Fontes wishes more high school students knew about health physics and all of the career possibilities it offers.
“It’s such an incredible field,” she says. “You’re not limited. Once you get your health physics degree, there are so many opportunities.”
Expanding Job Market Driven by Health Care, Energy Needs
Assoc. Prof. Mark Tries ’90, ’94, ’00, who coordinates the Radiological Sciences Program in the Department of Physics and Applied Physics, says graduates with bachelor’s degrees in health physics have their pick of jobs at salaries starting around $70,000, while those with master’s degrees can earn well over $100,000 right out of school.
That’s because health physicists are retiring faster than they’re being replaced, according to a December 2022 report in the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics. Only 18 colleges and universities offer an undergraduate degree in the specialty, even as the demand for radiation health and safety specialists grows, driven in part by the expansion of the nuclear power industry and advances in the use of radiological imaging and treatments in health care. [See sidebar on medical physics, p. 18.]
In September, the International Atomic Energy Agency bumped up its annual projections for the growth of nuclear power for the fourth year in a row, estimating that worldwide capacity will more than double by 2050.
At UMass Lowell, undergraduate physics majors who choose the radiological health physics option learn how to measure radiation in different environments, safely handle radioactive materials and protect people from excess exposure through education, training, internships and capstone research projects. They also learn many of the common health and safety regulations governing the use of radiation.
Our students, especially at the graduate level, have internships at the national labs,” including Lawrence Livermore, Idaho, Argon and Sandia National Laboratories. -Mark TriesMaster’s students in radiological sciences and protection get more advanced and specialized training, especially in dosimetry and shielding. Most UML students stay the extra year through the bachelor’s-to-master’s program. Others, like Welker, earn a master’s degree part time while working full time, Tries says.
“With the master’s degree, they typically go into a management role,” he says. “Their earnings are higher throughout their careers.”
The master’s degree also prepares graduates to sit for a pair of exams to become a Certified Health Physicist. The certification isn’t necessary for employment, but it marks another level of competence that qualifies health physicists for even better jobs.
UML grads pass the exam at a higher-than-average rate because of their internships and the range of practical experience they get in campus facilities and labs while working or interning for the Radiation Safety Office, Tries says.
“Our students, especially at the graduate level, have internships at the national labs,” including Lawrence Livermore, Idaho, Argon and Sandia National Laboratories, he says. “We’ve had a lot of our alums hired at MIT and Harvard.”
Radiological Sciences at UMass Lowell
When Tries began as a student here in 1986, UMass Lowell had a robust radiological sciences program, with “some outstanding faculty members who were well-known nationally for their expertise,” he says.
By 2000, when Tries completed his Ph.D., all but one of those professors had retired. Tries applied for a vacant faculty position and was hired to help rebuild the program.
It was slow going at first. As the authors of the 2022 Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics report noted, many students turned away from anything nuclear-related because of the reactor accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
But a new generation of students who see nuclear power as a greener alternative to fossil fuels is turning to health physics to make sure the nuclear industry meets higher safety standards, a category in which Welker places herself.
“I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of preventing” a meltdown or nuclear accident, Welker says.
Others are fascinated by medical physics, now a separate option at UMass Lowell for master’s and Ph.D. students who want to help oncologists treat cancer patients or work in cancer and medical imaging research.
Fontes got interested in radiological sciences while in high school because a family member was undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. At first, she didn’t realize that health physics and medical physics were separate disciplines.
But through her work-study job in the Radiation Safety Office, she fell in love with health physics and decided to stick with it. At the beginning of the year, she came full circle when TerraPower promoted her to radiopharmaceutical technician. She’s now helping cancer researchers test a potentially less toxic radiation treatment.
Unlike Welker and Fontes, Navy veteran Declan Haraghey knew he wanted to study health physics when he came to UMass Lowell in fall 2022.
Fresh out of high school in Connecticut, Haraghey earned an associate degree in nuclear engineering technology at Three Rivers Community College. As part of his studies, he came on a field trip to UMass Lowell to see all the facilities here.
Haraghey had hoped to work at the Millstone Power Station in Waterford, Connecticut, after he graduated, but they weren’t hiring. Instead, he joined the Navy, and for four of his nine years as a machinist’s mate, he operated and maintained the nuclear reactor that powered the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
“About three years into my time on the ship, I decided I was going to go back to school in health physics,” he says. “And I knew that the health physics program at UMass Lowell was one of the best in the country.”
Like Welker and Fontes, he encourages younger students and veterans or anyone else with nuclear experience to study radiation safety and control.
“The field is really needed,” he says. “Even if we got rid of all the nuclear power plants, the need would still be there; it’s in hospitals, it’s in universities, it’s in reactors, it’s in research labs that are trying to do new medical things.”
Research and Training have Ramped Up
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took note of the looming shortage of health physicists, and they increased support for research and recruitment efforts, including at UMass Lowell, which can offer significant scholarships and financial support to students at all levels, Tries says.
Last summer, UML offered a paid 10-week summer program that introduced community college students to nuclear science research and safety. The Nuclear Recruitment Through Undergraduate Research program is funded by a three-year, $315,000 Department of Energy grant.
UML has also invested millions of dollars to upgrade Pinanski Hall, which houses the research reactor, the particle accelerator and a brand-new radiochemistry lab for Asst. Prof. Erin Bertelsen.
Bertelsen, who was hired shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic struck and has been supported by a $450,000 NRC faculty development grant for the past three years, just won a three-year, $641,178 DOE grant for research into better methods of separating lanthanides, which are rare earth elements that are widely used in fiber optics, advanced health care applications, wind turbines and other technologies.
Assoc. Prof. Marian Jandel, who joined UML in 2017, is a nuclear physicist who mentors several students in the interdisciplinary Radiological Sciences Ph.D. Program.
In 2022, Jandel won a five-year, $438,000 early-career development CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation for his research on using gadolinium in radiation therapy, and in 2023, he won three grants totaling more than $1 million to improve the accuracy of nuclear data that’s used in astrophysics, homeland security and oil well analysis.
While most radiological sciences Ph.D. students are seeking careers in medical physics, where shortages are even more severe than in health physics according to the 2022 report, the Ph.D. program has expanded, thanks to the growing portfolio of faculty research in chemistry and health, medical and nuclear physics, Jandel says.
“Graduates will have skills in nuclear physics, radiation detection physics, medical physics and nuclear data as well as radiochemistry,” he says. “But their dissertation research will specialize in the area where they want to go.”