Dr. Shannon O’Reilly never imagined that her curiosity about global oncology would lead her to meet kings. But there she was, standing in Ghana before Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene himself—flanked by local medical physicists and physicians—representing a dream that had been years in the making.
“When I was looking at residency programs, I searched for ones with a global component,” she recalls. “There was really only one, and I didn’t even end up going there.” But fate had other plans. At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Stephen Avery — a towering figure in global health physics — took Dr. O’Reilly under his wing. That mentorship led to her first major global project experience: building a free, online training platform for medical physics trainees in low- and middle-income countries through Medical Physics for World Benefit.
Dr. O’Reilly found her calling in education. “That’s my passion,” she says. And it shows. At Penn, Drs. O’Reilly and Avery designed a rotation for graduate students to train in Ghana, rotating through four medical centers. “It was more than training — it was collaboration.” The program even secured a three-year grant which includes aims to implement AI tools that could streamline treatment planning, tailored for local workflows.
One trip to Ghana left a lasting impression — not just the warm welcome or the deep partnerships, but the resilience of the physicists she met. Inspired by this ingenuity, Dr. O’Reilly now dreams of tackling systemic issues, like the lack of equipment service contracts, with global surveys and advocacy to push vendors toward more equitable solutions. “You can’t just throw AI at the problem,” she says. “Some centers are still using paper records. We have to start by understanding the infrastructure, the barriers—and then build from there.”
At the same time, she’s applying for funding to launch public education initiatives around cervical cancer prevention in Ghana, aiming to address misconceptions, cultural barriers, and a lack of awareness around screening and vaccination. She serves on two global committees under the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). Through these committees, she’s helping develop a continuing education course for medical physicists across Africa and mentoring an early career physicist through the International Council Associates Mentorship Program, inviting the next generation into the fold.
Her advice? “Don’t be scared. I didn’t think I had any experience. I hesitated to apply to committees. But this community is so welcoming. If you care about global health, there’s space for you here.”
Even after leaving Penn, her course Introduction to Global Oncology lives on — now reaching students across medicine, engineering, and physics. “It’s about building bridges — across disciplines, across borders, across experience levels,” she says.
And if you ask her what’s next, she’ll probably smile and say, “Something big.”
