Rate My Professor Kamran Avanaki

Kamran Avanaki is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Dermatology in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, holding adjunct appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pediatrics, and Neurosurgery, and serving as a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center. He directs the Optical & Photoacoustic Imaging Research and Analysis (OPIRA) laboratory, which designs and translates advanced imaging technologies such as photoacoustic computed tomography, photoacoustic microscopy, thermoacoustic imaging, ultrasound, optical coherence tomography, and microwave imaging for applications in neonatal brain imaging, skin conditions including melanoma and hidradenitis suppurativa, brain tumors, and cancer detection. His research integrates multidisciplinary expertise in electrical engineering, optics, advanced data processing, machine learning, deep learning, transfer learning, Vision Transformers, and agentic AI systems for biomedical signal and image enhancement, classification, and segmentation.

Earning his PhD from the University of Kent in 2012 with outstanding achievement in Medical Optical Imaging and Computing, Avanaki previously served as Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Wayne State University before joining UIC in 2020. A senior member of IEEE, OPTICA, and SPIE, he chairs sessions at SPIE Photonics West and Medical Imaging conferences, serves on NIH ITD and SBIR study sections, and acts as Associate Editor for Journal of Biomedical Optics Express, Frontiers in Neuroscience (Brain Imaging Methods section), and Scientific Reports. He has authored over 120 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals including PNAS, Cancer Research, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Photoacoustics, and Journal of Biomedical Optics, supported by NIH R01 grants, Melanoma Research Alliance grants, and other funding. His contributions include multiple awards: at Wayne State University, Outstanding Faculty Awards (2016, 2017, 2019), Research Excellence Award (2019), Excellence in Teaching Award (2019), and Academy of Scholars Junior Faculty Award (2020); at UIC, Departmental Rising Star Award (2023), College of Engineering Teaching Award (2024), and Teaching Recognition Program Awardee (2025).