Christopher J. Tien, PhD, DABR, FAAPM
Associate Professor of Therapeutic RadiologyCards
About
Titles
Associate Professor of Therapeutic Radiology
Lead Physicist for Brachytherapy, Therapeutic Radiology
Biography
Dr. Christopher J. Tien is an Associate Professor and Lead Brachytherapy Physicist in the department of Therapeutic Radiology. In addition to his appointments at Yale, Dr. Tien is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Brown University.
Dr. Tien practiced at a community hospital in suburban Chicago for 3 years after completing his residency at Brown University/ Rhode Island Hospital. He completed his PhD by the time he was 25 years old from the University of Florida on a full fellowship following his accelerated 5-year combined Master's & Bachelor's Degrees in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences obtained summa cum laude at the University of Michigan.
Clinically, he is a board-certified therapeutic medical physicist appointed as a Medical Physicist at Yale-New Haven Hospital. His current translational research is largely inspired by his clinical duties in brachytherapy (gynecological, prostate, ocular, and skin) applications and radiobiological modeling.
In 2024, Dr. Tien was elected as a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), making him one of the youngest elected Fellows in the AAPM's 66 year history. With AAPM, he is currently the chair of the national AAPM Task Group on high-dose-rate brachytherapy (TG59). He has served terms on the national AAPM Board of Directors and as the president of the Connecticut chapter of AAPM. He is a member of the national AAPM Medical Physics Education Subcommittee and American Brachytherapy Society (ABS) ABS National Education Subcommittee.
Dr. Tien is a full member of the AAPM, ABS, and the Yale Cancer Center.
Appointments
Therapeutic Radiology
Associate Professor on TermPrimary
Other Departments & Organizations
Education & Training
- Medical Physics Resident
- Brown University (Warren Alpert Medical School) (2013)
- PhD
- University of Florida, Medical Physics (2011)
- MS
- University of Michigan, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (2008)
- BS
- University of Michigan, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (2007)
Board Certifications
Therapeutic Radiology
- Certification Organization
- American Board of Radiology
- Original Certification Date
- 2014
Research
Overview
I have an ongoing interest in many areas, largely inspired as translational clinical work to improve patient care and health equity in 3 separate areas: 1) pioneering a zero-shot learning approach to automated treatment planning system for clinical brachytherapy to provide high-quality radiation delivery plans even with limited experience. 2) iteration between physical 3-D printed prototyping of high-atomic-number shielded brachytherapy cylinders informed by Monte Carlo radiation transport calculations to produce patient-specific treatment devices in gynecological cancer. 3) advanced parallelized computational GPU-driven framework to elucidate mechanisms underlying radiobiological models of cell-kill with the specific objective to increase accessibility to prostate cancer care.
In addition to my brachytherapy research, I am always looking to provide expertise on: 1) studying the effects and outcomes of Gamma Knife radiosurgery. projects. 2) multimodal CT, MR, PET, and ultrasound imaging stemming from patient-specific treatment planning with: brachytherapy, Gamma Knife, Cyber Knife, external-beam radiotherapy, and Scintix PET-guided radiation.