Linda Walsh


Linda Walsh is a British scientist who specializes in radiation epidemiology. She is an honorary visiting research fellow in the Medical Physics Department of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Biography

Walsh was born in Bolton, England in 1958, and attended Smithills Moor Grammar School. She studied at the Department of Physics of the University of Manchester, gaining a Bachelor of Science degree, Master of Science and PhD. In 2013, Walsh was awarded a higher doctorate by the Medical Faculty of Manchester University.
Since 2000, Walsh's research has evaluated the risk of cancer and other medical conditions from exposure to ionising radiation, using applied statistical or quantitative methods. She served on the World Health Organization's expert panel that assessed radiation-related cancer risk after the tsunami-caused nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima power plant in Japan.
Walsh also developed epidemiological models for thyroid cancer risk associated with the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine. Other research has related to Japanese survivors of the World War II atomic bombs in the Life Span Study cohort, as well as German uranium miners working for Wismut, a mining company in East Germany during the time of the Cold War.

Selected publications

  • Walsh L, Hafner L, Berger T, Matthiä D, Schneider U, Straube U. European astronaut radiation related cancer risk assessment using dosimetric calculations of organ dose equivalents. Z Med Phys. 2023 Nov 4:S0939-388900119-8. doi: 10.1016/j.zemedi.2023.10.003.
  • Hafner L, Walsh L, Rühm W. Assessing the impact of different neutron RBEs on the all solid cancer radiation risks obtained from the Japanese A-bomb survivors data. Int J Radiat Biol. 2022 Sep 26:1-15. doi: 10.1080/09553002.2022.2117871.
  • Walsh L, Hafner L, Straube U, Ulanowski A, Fogtman A, Durante M, Weerts G, Schneider U. A bespoke health risk assessment methodology for the radiation protection of astronauts. Radiat Environ Biophys. 2021 May;60:213-231. doi: 10.1007/s00411-021-00910-0.