The Action worked in the area of the fundamental interaction processes for different types of incident radiation that occur from the initial deposition of radiative energy to the formation of radiation damage in biological material. Some of the most dramatic progress in the course of the Action has been in the study of electron scattering from bio-molecules. It was shown that dissociative electron attachment is a dominant process at low electron energies and is both bond and site selective in the DNA bases. These pioneering results suggest that may be possible to explore DNA damage at a basic molecular level. The use of photons and synchrotron radiation to explore biomolecular structure and DNA damage has also been pursued. Further the Action worked on ion impact of nucleotide bases and ion induced fragmentation of water. The Action developed a strong programme to explore and develop computational methods for calculating the electronic states of biomolecules and studying biomolecular fragmentation patterns under different ionizing radiations. The study of radiation damage resulted in the most applied research with the Chair Dr K McGuigan technique for solar UV water sterilization being featured internationally as a cheap yet effective method for water treatment in poor countries and applicable in regions of Natural Disaster (e.g. tsunami)
