Dr Scott O. Schwahn

Senior Health Physicist
Oak Ridge Laboratory
Dr. Scott O. Schwahn has been a senior health physicist at the United States Department of Energy’s (U.S. DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the last 16 years. He has been a Certified Health Physicist (CHP) since 1995. His technical expertise includes radiation protection at high-energy proton and electron accelerators, neutron activation source term calculations, radiation transport, shielding, gamma spectroscopy, radiation dosimetry, quality assurance, emergency response, and work process improvements. Most of his efforts are currently spent at the Spallation Neutron Source, the world’s most intense accelerator-based pulsed neutron source. Prior to his current role, he served as the external dosimetry performance evaluation program administrator for the U.S. DOE Laboratory Accreditation Program where he was responsible for performance testing, assessing, and accreditation for all of the U.S. DOE laboratories that work with radiation. His first decade of health physics work was at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, at the time a 6-GeV superconducting electron accelerator facility.
Dr. Schwahn has served continuously in health physics community leadership roles for the past 30 years, most notably as Treasurer and then as President of the American Academy of Health Physics, as a Director of the Health Physics Society, Technical Director of the Health Physics Society Laboratory Accreditation Program, chair of many technical committees, and is currently an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed Health Physics journal. He was honored with the Health Physics Society’s prestigious Elda E. Anderson Award, bestowed annually to one young health physicist, and was elected as a Fellow of the Health Physics Society. He has been a United States delegate to the International Radiation Protection Association since 2012. In his spare time, he and his wife volunteer for hours weekly at a horse rescue facility where they help rescue and rehabilitate abandoned, abused, and neglected horses.