Master of Architecture student lands prize
to fund research for cancer center design

 

Dyutima Jha, a second-year Master of Architecture student, has won the Puckett Prize for Healthcare Architecture on the strength of her research on designing facilities for a type of cancer treatment that may be available soon in the U.S.

The annual prize is awarded to a graduate student in a U.S. architecture school by the Houston Architecture Foundation from a bequest by David G. Puckett, AIA, to fund research projects that will enhance the field of healthcare architecture.

Jha is developing design guidelines for cancer treatment centers using carbon therapy, a technique not yet available in the U.S., but used in Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Austria and Japan.

"The main idea," wrote Jha in an abstract, "is to use evidence-based principles to generate a design which successfully integrates this novel technology as well as create a humane environment."

Carbon therapy, wrote Jha, is on the verge of revolutionizing cancer treatment. The procedure employs heavy ions of carbon accelerated with calculated velocity to target deep-seated tumors difficult to operate on and incapable of being eradicated effectively by conventional treatments.

Carbon ions, she continued, offer the benefit of using higher doses of radiation, while at the same time considerably reducing the harmful effect on healthy tissues.

Jha has already visited a carbon treatment center in Germany as part of her research, as well as many U.S. cancer facilities, with the aim of designing more therapeutic environments to reduce patient stress.

After creating the guidelines, she said, she will design a treatment facility as part of the expansion scheme of Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

 

- Posted: Nov. 23, 2009-



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Dyutima Jha


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