Dear members and friends of MPWB, 

Thanks a lot to those who have attended one of our two Annual General Meetings (AGMs). I hope you found it informative and we would love to get feedback in particular regarding things we can improve. 

This is my last message as MPWB president and I am delighted to hand over to Afua Yorke who is a great person coming with new ideas while knowing the organisation well and building on present strengths. MPWB will enter 2025 with a new structure involving a management committee and a few other working groups which will allow more members to get involved in activities. Also, the work involving more regular communications as per the schedule shared at the AGM and particularly the update of our webpage is on our agenda. The first communication will be a newsletter in January 2025 and I would like to encourage you to submit a contribution. We would be particularly interested in publishing thoughts about the medical physics profession in your country. 

Given the success of our IDMP poetry competition I am aiming to establish a poetry corner on the webpage and hope all contributors are happy to see their work on our webpage. We will contact authors about it. 

Stepping down from the presidency will allow me to devote more time to actual projects and I have a few things in mind. Setting up clinical training programs is one of my interests and I will have an opportunity to contribute to an IAEA workshop with this topic in Hanoi early January. I also hope to get more involved with mentorship and support John Schreiner in building on the results of our survey a few years back (https://journals.lww.com/jomp/fulltext/2024/10000/virtual_mentoring_for_medical_physicists__results.23.aspx). This is an important topic and I wonder how much practical work could be facilitated in this way using for example life video communication. 

Two years of chairing MPWB meetings at early hours in the morning taught me the importance of time zones. In this context, I would like to explore if there is enough interest to establish a MPWB chapter in the Asia Pacific region. How this can work and how it can actually add to the number of excellent medical physics organisations in the region is something to be explored.  

I would love to hear from you regarding these thoughts. 

Finally, my sincere thanks to all MPWB members and supporters for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the organisation. I should particularly thank my fellow board members for their support and a number of previous board members who continue to carry the organisation forward. 

Best wishes and all the best for 2025 

Tomas 

(Tomas.Kron@petermac.org)