Andre Khalil

At the University of Maine, I am the founding director of the CompuMAINE Lab (Computational Modeling, Analysis of Images and Numerical Experiments). I have co-authored 133 publications and obtained 44 grants/contracts totaling $8.4M (as PI, co-PI, or senior personnel), while developing or restructuring several undergraduate and graduate courses in Mathematics, Statistics, Chemical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. I have trained (or am currently training) 31 thesis students (8 PhDs + 17 Masters + 6 Honors). In 2022 I received a Faculty Mentor Impact Award at the University of Maine.

My most focused project relates to breast cancer, where I have co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, presented at several international conferences, and advised 11 thesis students on this topic. I have secured over $1.5M in funding specifically for the breast cancer project from the Maine Cancer Foundation, the National Cancer Institute, the Maine Technology Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and various accelerator programs. I am a co-inventor on three issued patents related to this work (two in the U.S. and one in Europe), and we recently filed for another provisional patent. In 2022 I founded a startup company called WAVED Medical LLC, which was awarded an exclusive license from UMaine to commercialize our breast cancer risk assessment technology. At WAVED, we went on to secure more grants from federal, state, and private entities, which is leading to very exciting and promising results.

Through this work, our academic research is now translating into clinical applications with the potential to save lives by improving early detection and risk assessment.

Awards

• PI/MPI of the largest funding obtained from the National Cancer Institute in UMaine’s history (more than all previous grants combined — the most recent before ours being in 2004)