Thomas Yankeelov, Ph.D.

Thomas Yankeelov is the W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Professor of Computational Oncology and a professor of biomedical engineering and medicine at The University of Texas at Austin. He serves as the director of the Center for Computational Oncology in the Institute for Computational and Engineering Sciences and as director of cancer imaging research within the Livestrong Cancer Institutes.

The overall goal of Yankeelov’s research is to improve patient care by employing advanced in vivo imaging methods for the early identification, assessment and prediction of tumors’ response to therapy. He develops tumor forecasting methods by employing patient-specific, quantitative imaging data to initialize and constrain predictive, multiscale biophysical models of tumor growth with the purpose of optimizing therapies for the individual cancer patient. This is accomplished by dividing his efforts into approximately equal parts mathematical modeling, preclinical development, application, validation and implementation in human studies.

Yankeelov is passionate about educating the next generation of cancer scientists and has taught several courses in both medical and engineering schools including Medical Imaging, Mathematical Methods, Cancer Imaging, Biophysical Models of Cancer, and Computational Oncology.