Ian Scott Hamilton, PhD, CHP

Ian Scott Hamilton, Ph.D., is the Corporate Radiation Safety Officer, and Chief – Diagnostic Physics, for Baylor Scott & White Health, which consists of more than 40 hospitals and clinics. Dr. Hamilton is also an associate professor within the Texas A&M University, College of Medicine, where he has responsibilities for teaching both medical school students and radiology residents. Dr. Hamilton lectures extensively across the US on patient dose reduction and domestic preparedness, and consults from time-to-time on various engineering, regulatory, and scientific projects through an engineering consulting firm he founded in 1998, Foxfire Scientific, Inc.

Dr. Hamilton got his start as an enlisted technician (electrician) in the US Navy nuclear submarine corps, and has 27 years of experience in health physics, medical physics, and nuclear engineering. He holds a BS degree in Biology with a Nuclear Engineering Technology minor, an MS in Health Physics, and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering with an emphasis in Health Physics. Licensed by the State of Texas in diagnostic radiological physics, nuclear medicine physics, and medical health physics, Dr. Hamilton is also certified in the comprehensive practice of health physics by the American Board of Health Physics (CHP), as well in diagnostic radiological physics by the American College of Radiology (DABR).

From 1995-2005, Dr. Hamilton was an assistant professor and the Health Physics Program Director for the Texas A&M University, Department of Nuclear Engineering. Within that program he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in radiological and interaction physics, radiation detection and measurement laboratories, radiation protection design and safety measures, and technical writing and communication with non-technical audiences. Dr. Hamilton's primary research interest was the characterization of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM), including oil and gas NORM, radiological assessment in uranium mining and milling, and radon. Dr. Hamilton also performed research concerning everything from disposition of surplus nuclear weapons, to cancer treatments using targeted, molecular sources of ionizing radiation, to weapon of mass destruction neutralization with novel radiation sources.

Following Texas A&M, Dr. Hamilton served as an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, where he taught medical physics and radiation biology to MDs in residence to become radiologists. As Director of BCM’s consulting medical physics practice, Dr. Hamilton taught radiation safety, designed shielding for diagnostic and therapy facilities, and performed oversight/performance evaluations for the imaging departments of several medical centers and clinics in Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska. Dr. Hamilton’s primary research interests during that period consisted in patient dose reduction-protocols, improvements in radiation shielding-design techniques, as well as a continued focus in domestic preparedness with a shift toward preparation of local emergency and radiology/imaging departments.

Because of Dr. Hamilton's experiences aboard a ballistic missile submarine, USS Henry Clay (SSBN 625), as well as the aforementioned weapons material disposition research, he was asked to serve the National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) as a health physicist. Along with Dr. Stephen Becker, Dr. Hamilton served on scientific committee SC 46-14, which was concerned with management of terrorist events involving radioactive materials; the committee produced NCRP Report No. 138, with the same title, which was released in October, 2001. Dr. Hamilton accepted a follow-on assignment as the instrumentation and detection-subcommittee chair for the scientific committee that promulgated NCRP Commentary 19, Key Elements Of Preparing Emergency Responders For Nuclear And Radiological Terrorism, in 2005. In between his NCRP writing-committee assignments, Dr. Hamilton accepted the invitation to teach in this course at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and has been gladly doing so ever since.