Dr. Thomas Kroc is an Applications Physicist III at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). His present position at IARC at Fermilab emphasizes the application of new accelerators and accelerator technologies to medical applications, and in the present situation, medical device sterilization. This allows him to draw on his educational and professional experience in nuclear engineering, experimental high energy physics, accelerator physics, and medical physics.
He has led the organizing committee for five workshops on Medical Device Sterilization to promote the use of electron beams and x-rays held at Fermilab in 2019 through this year. He was the chair of a committee with the National Academies that published the report – Radioactive Sources: Applications and Alternative Technologies. He was the lead author of a white paper “Accelerator-driven Medical Sterilization to Replace Co-60 Sources” that was written for the NNSA in 2017. For 20 years he worked with the Neutron Therapy Facility at Fermilab which provided external beam radiation therapy for cancer using high-energy neutrons. He assumed leadership of this program from 2008 until its closure in 2013. His interests include development of accelerator technologies, applications of accelerators and accelerator technologies, medical device sterilization, radiation/matter interactions, and medical physics. Dr. Kroc holds a PhD in Physics (1989) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics (1981) from The Ohio State University.