Ralph James
Innovators, 2
December 2009 / January 2010
Volume 7 Number 6
This year, Ralph James has added a new R&D 100 Award plaque to his collection of four on his office wall. James, a senior physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has developed a new technology for detecting prostate cancer that has won him a 2009 award that recognizes the top 100 technological achievements of the year.
James's innovations in advanced radiation detectors also won him Discover magazine's "Innovator of the Year" award in the field of imaging in 1997. In the same year, the National Association for Seed and Venture Capital Funds selected James as co-winner of an award for developing one of the "World's 50 Best Technologies." In addition, James won two awards from IEEE in 2004 and 2005 for his outstanding work on radiation detectors.
"All of these awards were the result of collaborative efforts," James said. "I like to bring national labs, academic institutions, and industry together for a team effort to work on a scientific challenge. Different viewpoints and multiple disciplines often result in innovative ideas."
For just about his whole life, James has been driven by challenges and, in his words, "finds joy in discovery."
Born in Nashville, Tenn., in 1953, James was the second youngest in a family of five children. His father, a mechanic in a chemical plant, and his mother, a homemaker, both stressed the importance of education. James enjoyed school, and he found great personal rewards in academic achievement. From the time he was in fifth grade, he was certain of his desired career path. He wanted to earn a Ph.D. in either math or science.
"In high school, I found out a year in advance what books the students would be assigned to read in the classes I would take, so I could get a head start on the reading," James said. "In college, I took twice the number of courses that were required—€”so many classes that they would overlap, and I couldn't attend all of them. But I studied on my own and did well on the tests without going to the classes."
After earning a B.S. in engineering physics from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1976, James earned an M.S. in physics from Georgia Tech in 1977, another M.S. in applied physics from Caltech in 1978, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Caltech in 1980. He joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Eugene P. Wigner Fellow in 1981 and in 1984, he moved on to Sandia National Laboratories, where he worked as a distinguished member of the technical staff. In June 2001, James came to Brookhaven as the associate laboratory director for energy, environment and national security. In 2008, he stepped down from that position to again immerse himself in full-time research.
James holds 11 patents, has authored or co-authored more than 420 scientific publications and has edited 17 books. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the IEEE, the Optical Society of America, and the International Society for Optical Engineering.
James's graduate thesis at Caltech focused on understanding the interaction of light with semiconductor materials. And his research since then has followed that course. James is captivated by applied physics and has an unwavering interest in developing innovations that have an impact on society. At Oak Ridge, he developed methods to use carbon dioxide lasers for producing high-efficiency solar cells and other electronic devices. At Sandia, he investigated how high-power lasers and radiation react with various materials for national security purposes. In 1985, he began his research on x-ray and gamma ray detectors at Sandia, work he still pursues at Brookhaven.
Even while overseeing 240 employees as an associate director at Brookhaven, James continued with his own research in several areas, including how to make photon sensors work effectively for a wide variety of applications, from medical to the military. Funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development, James developed a new class of small semiconductor-based radiation detectors that can efficiently detect both x-rays and gamma rays at room temperature and can identify specific isotopes responsible for radiation. He also developed lightweight, hand-held instruments incorporating these detectors. Many of the detectors have been commercialized, and applications include medical imaging, nuclear nonproliferation, environmental monitoring and nuclear and space sciences.
Almost a decade ago, a urologist asked James if CZT detectors could be adapted for detecting prostate cancer. James was quite sure that they could. In 2005, he began research on the project under a CRADA, funded by Hybridyne Imaging Technologies, Inc., a company based in Ontario, Canada. The CZT detectors, the core component enabling the high-resolution imaging capability, was funded separately by the Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development.
The result was the award-winning ProxiScan—„, a nuclear medical instrument that can localize cancer tissue in the prostate gland in detail at an early stage, which is important for successful diagnosis and treatment of the potentially deadly disease that affects one in six men in the U.S.
The common way to screen for prostate cancer is by a blood test that measures the levels of a protein produced by the prostate gland called prostate-specific antigen, or PSA. Elevated PSA levels may indicate prostate cancer, but with a high number of false-positive detections. Sometimes men must have an invasive biopsy, normally guided by ultrasound imagery, to confirm a diagnosis. Other methods to diagnose prostate cancer and its potential spread to other locations include conventional nuclear imaging techniques.
But the current imaging methods have limitations. Benign and cancerous tumors cannot easily be distinguished by ultrasound, and fibrous tissues can be mistakenly identified as tumors if patients had radiation treatment of the prostate previously. Traditional nuclear imaging systems produce lower resolution images and are less efficient than ProxiScan. Also, the detectors in current systems are too large to be used in trans-rectal probes.
In contrast, ProxiScan is small enough for trans-rectal prostate cancer diagnosis, after the patient is injected with a tracer radiopharmaceutical. The high-resolution CZT detector drives the novel system. Using this new technology, the working distance between the imaging system and the prostate gland is minimized, allowing a urologist to obtain better images with a smaller amount of injected radioactive tracer, compared to conventional nuclear medical systems.
Clinical testing is next. The technology will be ready for the marketplace when that stage is successfully completed and the technology is FDA-approved.
James is currently the president-elect of the SPIE, an international society that advances light-based research. His work in SPIE requires extensive travel and, so far in the past year, has brought him to Australia, China and several countries in Europe. Through SPIE and other scientific societies, James has organized over 20 international conferences to bring the community together and create forums to solve problems. His entrepreneurial spirit and drive to see research results lead to new businesses and products have led to more than 40 CRADA partnerships.
In his leisure time, James likes to relax at home on Long Island with his wife, Marie, or travel to Arizona to visit his daughter, Karen Heringer, a homemaker, and 14-month-old grandchild, Luke, or his son, Dale, a computer technology specialist in California. Each year, James and his wife also escape to Vail, Colo., for a week of skiing.
Besides stretching his mind with work, James likes to stretch his muscles with exercise. He enjoys competitive sports, and at Brookhaven Lab's recreational field, he can be found playing ultimate Frisbee with the lab's staff and summer students.
James also fosters diversity and helps to educate the next generation of scientists. He has created special learning and career opportunities for students in the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Consortium and he has made generous contributions to the Renate W. Chasman Scholarship for Women at Brookhaven Lab, which encourages women to pursue careers in science, engineering and mathematics.
In the future, James plans to focus on medical, national security, space and synchrotron-related uses for CZT detectors, and he hopes to work on thin-film solar cell research.
When asked about retirement, he says, "I never think about it. I hope to keep working as long as I can."
Diane Greenberg is a writer at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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