Dr. Kurubarahalli Saroja has joined the Northern Illinois University Institute for Neutron Therapy at Fermilab (NIUINT at Fermilab) staff. She worked at the Neutron Therapy Facility between 1985 and 1993 and will now be assisting and advising Dr. Katherine Baker, the facility's new medical director. Both are members of the Nuclear Oncology Service Corporation, which agreed to provide clinical services beginning December 2005.

Throughout her career, Dr. Saroja has made an effort to remain involved in both neutron radiation and conventional (photon, electron) radiation therapies. Although she was not involved in the first ten years of the neutron therapy facility's clinical trials, she still recalls doing research and publications during her prior stint there. Eventually her interests drew her back to conventional radiation. "I didn't want to miss out on the regular radiation therapy, so I went back to that field. Now I do both." She says she has seen great advances in the field of (conventional) radiation oncology in the past ten years, which include Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) and more recently, Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT). Such technologies enable doctors "to visualize , plan, and target the tumor exactly and give the right radiation dose," explains Dr. Saroja.

In her free time, Dr. Saroja enjoys reading, writing, traveling and watching classical movies. She writes in both English and her native language, Kannada, a south Indian language. Jane Austen movies (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility) and Gone with the Wind top the list of her favorite classics.