Dr. Max Denis is a distinguished researcher and educator specializing in acoustics, biomedical engineering, and machine learning applications. As Program Director for Biomedical Engineering at UDC’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, he has led groundbreaking research in acoustic and seismic sensing; ultrasound elastography; and quantitative imaging for disease detection. A faculty senator and principal investigator on multiple federally funded projects, Dr. Denis has contributed to national and international research initiatives, including NATO’s Technical Team on urban threat sensing. His work has been published in leading journals, and he has received recognition for his contributions to diversity in STEM and cancer research.
Experience
Education
Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Roles
Co-Chair, Special Session on Acoustofluidics, The Acoustical Society of America, 2025 United States Delegate, NATO Tehnical Team on Aoustic and Seismic Sensing of Threats in Urban Environments, 2019-24 Organizing Chair, 18th International Symposium of Long-Range Sound Propagation, 2020 Guest Editor, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2021
Courses Taught
Biological Imaging Design of Control Systems Analysis of Physiological Systems
Expertise
Research Focus / Works in Progress
Acoustic and seismic sensing for urban environments; ultrasound elastography for breast and thyroid cancer detection and monitoring; quantitative for ultrasound for age-related pathologies; transfer learning for sound source identification, localization, and tracking
Denis, M.F., Velazquez, C.D., Ligon, D.A., & Collier, S.L. (2024). Intensity-based algorithm for the identification and tracking of airplane wing-tip vortices. IEEE Sensor Letters, 8(4), https://doi.org/10.1109/LSENS.2024.3369936
Qorib, M., Oladunni, T., Denis, M., Ososanya, E., & Cotae, P. (2023). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Text mining, sentiment analysis and machine learning on COVID-19 vaccination Twitter dataset. Expert Systems with Applications, 212, 118715. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2022.118715
Selected Presentations
Denis M., (2022). Sound field reconstruction in urban environments: Application to enhance mapping of urban microspaces. Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.
Selected Grants
National Institutes of Health. Advancing diversity in aging research through undergraduate education at the University of the District of Columbia.
Department of Defense. GPU accelerated micro-CT imaging system for research and education.
United States Army. Center of excellence for acoustic and seismic sensing of urban environments at the University of the District of Columbia.
Recognitions
Summer HBCU/MI Faculty Research Fellowship, 2020 National Cancer Institute Diversity Supplement Awardee, 2013
