Autism is a spectrum of developmental disabilities impacting social skills, language processing, cognition and other functions. The UofL tool has been shown to be 98.5% accurate in diagnosing kids as young as two, which could give doctors more time to intervene with potentially life-changing therapy. Their results were published in the journal .

“Therapy could be the difference between an individual needing full-time care and being independent, holding a job and living a fulfilled life,” said Ayman El-Baz, a co-inventor and professor and chair in the . He developed the technology with Gregory Barnes and Manuel Casanova of the UofL .

shows therapy can have the most impact if done in early childhood, when the brain is more elastic. However, currently, and even fewer are diagnosed by age eight. The problem, the researchers say, is one of supply and demand — there are too many patients and too few specialists to conduct the interviews and examinations needed for diagnosis.

“As a result, there’s an urgent need for a new, objective technology that can help us diagnose kids early,” said Barnes, a professor of neurology and executive director of the . “We think our tool can help fill that need, while providing more objectivity over the current interview method.”

With the UofL technology, AI can make the initial diagnosis, which researchers think could reduce specialist workload by as much as 30%. The specialist would meet later with the patient to confirm the diagnosis and talk about next steps.

The UofL technology works by using AI to analyze magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for differences and abnormal connections that may indicate autism. Tested against scans of 226 children between the ages of 24 and 48 months, the technology was able to identify the 120-some children with autism with near perfect accuracy.

By looking at the physical structures of the brain rather than using interviews, researchers believe they can make diagnoses more objective and target the specific parts of the brain that may benefit most from therapy.

“The idea is that by drawing from both medicine and engineering, we can come up with a better solution that improves lives,” said Mohamed Khudri, a undergraduate student and author on the paper.

The diagnostic technology and intellectual property received support through . That includes the office’s suite of innovation programs, aimed at developing research-backed inventions for market, including the prestigious national Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program through the National Science Foundation. UofL is one of only a handful of universities nationwide to have each of these programs — and it’s the only one to have them all.

The agreement is known as a “2+2 Program”, meaning 50% of the classes will be held at each institution, for both students from UofL and AIU. Students in this program will earn a UofL degree.

UofL and AIU intend to enhance relations between the two universities by developing an academic and cultural exchange in teaching, research, and other activities. UofL seeks to increase opportunities for students outside the United States to take UofL classes and obtain UofL degrees, while AIU has expertise and endeavors to support UofL with on-site recruitment, logistical and administrative support, and academic delivery of the program.

Present at the official virtual signing ceremony on November 16, 2021 were Professor Khaled Atef Abdel-Ghaffar, Minster of Higher ����ֱ��; Professor Essam Elkordi, President of AIU; Professor Roshdy Zahran, AIU Director of Board of Trustees; Professor Mustafa ElNainay, dean of the Faculty of Computers Science and Engineering at AIU; Lori Gonzalez, UofL executive vice president and provost; Emmanuel Collins, dean of the UofL JB Speed School of Engineering; Tom Rockaway, associate dean of Programs and Initiatives for UofL JB Speed School of Engineering; and Ayman El-Baz, chair of Department of Bioengineering for UofL JB Speed School of Engineering.

“I am excited about this new partnership with AIU. It provides Speed School with the opportunity to experience an influx of students from a growing region of the world and have fruitful cross-cultural fertilization with our partners in Egypt,” said Collins. “Our agreement also opens up opportunities for other colleges within UofL and AIU to establish similar partnerships and share in these benefits.

The 2+2 Program brings to fruition a program that was the brainchild of El-Baz, who worked with Rockaway and Collins to secure the details of the partnership.

El-Baz’s ultimate vision was to create an avenue for Egyptian students to obtain a degree from UofL. To that end, El-Baz approached Professor Khaled Atef Abdel-Ghaffar, the Minister of Higher ����ֱ�� and hosted Abdel-Ghaffar at the UofL campus in January 2020, to show the world class research, facilities and resources available to offer a high quality education to Egyptian students.

The bioengineering professor said an international partnership like this will reap benefits for both universities, including student recruitment for Speed School and offering a high-quality engineering education for Egyptian students while offering an enhanced cultural experience for all students in the program.

The agreement will enable UofL to start offering classes to students at AIU in the Fall 2022 academic term. Under the agreement, students will spend their first three years of their engineering program at Al Alamein University in Egypt, and two subsequent years at University of Louisville to complete their degrees. (In Egypt, a Bachelor’s degree requires five years). Both universities plan to start similar partnerships with other disciplines that are offered at UofL, both in and out of the engineering school. “This is just the beginning,” said El-Baz.

Under the new memorandums of understanding, UofL has teamed up with Assiut University, south of Cairo��in Asyut, and the newly established Al-Alamain University, near Alexandria.

The agreements will allow those students to spend the first two years of their education at their home universities before completing their degrees at UofL.

“This is what we need, in terms of international collaboration, to lift us up,” said UofL president Dr. Neeli Bendapudi.

The first memoranda was signed in January with Egyptian Minister of Higher ����ֱ�� and Scientific Research, Dr. Abdel-Ghaffar, to forge the new relationship between UofL and Al-Almain University. The school is slated to open this year, and under this agreement, the first students would be Cardinals.

While the agreement will begin with undergraduate bioengineering programming, UofL’s bioengineering chair, Dr. Ayman El-Baz, said it could potentially expand later to include both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“These agreements are just the first step in expanding the reach of Speed School and UofL to provide high quality education,” he said. “Once established, these programs will confer economic and societal benefits to both Egypt and Kentucky.”

The second agreement was signed with Dr. Tarek El-Gammal, president of Assiut University. Under this agreement, El-Baz said, students at Assiut would complete two years of their undergraduate engineering degrees in Egypt before coming to UofL.

“We are excited to move forward with this MOU,” El-Gammal said. He was in Louisville for the signing.��

He and 167 other inventors from institutions around the world will be formally recognized as 2019 NAI Fellows at a ceremony in Phoenix, Arizona, in April 2020, according to a .

“It is a great honor for me to be one of the NAI fellows,” said El-Baz, a UofL J.B. Speed School of Engineering alum and chair of bioengineering.

At UofL, El-Baz works at the intersection of computer science and medicine. Many of his inventions use artificial intelligence to analyze medical images, allowing them to very accurately diagnose everything from ��to to .

El-Baz is the sixth UofL inventor to be inducted into the NAI, following Suzanne Ildstad and Kevin Walsh (2014); William Pierce (2015); Paula Bates (2016); and most recently, Robert S. Keynton (2017).

“We’re very proud of Ayman, and all past UofL inductees, for this huge accomplishment and all the hard work behind it,” said Allen Morris, executive director of the . His office works with UofL researchers, like , to commercialize their inventions.��

“This kind of honor shows our university’s commitment to and leadership in research, invention and technology commercialization,” he said. “These inventions have the power to change and improve the way we work and live.”

Aside from the EPI-Center, El-Baz has also worked with other UofL programs for technology development and commercialization. He was the first researcher to hit a “trifecta” with UofL’s suite of��, having earned entry into the UofL Coulter Translational Partnership, NSF I-Corps and NSF AWARE:ACCESS programs.

“These crucial support mechanisms have enabled me to develop and translate technologies from ideation to commercialization quickly,” El-Baz said.

To date, El-Baz holds eight patents, five copyrights and has had 11 technologies optioned and two have been licensed to companies for further development and commercialization. Some technologies have also resulted in startup ventures like Autism Diagnostics Technologies Inc., which El-Baz co-founded, creating jobs and economic development.��

NAI fellows hold a collective 41,500 issued U.S. patents, resulting in 11,000 licensed technologies and companies, generating more than 36 million jobs and $1.6 trillion in revenue, according to the release.

“I am so impressed by the caliber of this year’s class of NAI Fellows, all of whom are highly-regarded in their respective fields,” NAI President Paul R. Sanberg said in the release. “The breadth and scope of their discovery is truly staggering. I’m excited not only see their work continue, but also to see their knowledge influence a new era of science, technology, and innovation worldwide.”

“I like to work in science that can improve health care, especially if the patient is a relative.” El-Baz said.

The project has now been funded by the Coulter Translational Partnership, NSF I-Corps and NSF AWARE:ACCESS, three funding programs aimed to get entrepreneurs and their inventions to the marketplace more quickly and successfully. The group has applied for patent protection and is collaborating with the University of Michigan on a clinical study. Louisville and Michigan are two of just 16 schools in the U.S. to receive funding from the Coulter Foundation.

“We would not have been able to do this without the Coulter funding ($223,000),” El-Baz said.

The money from I-Corps and AWARE:ACCESS has gone to support Isaac Gebru, a UofL Speed School of Engineering graduate who worked with El-Baz and has created a start-up company to commercialize and market the technology. Last year, I-Corps paid for Gebru to complete a UofL Foundation-sponsored training course for upstart businesses called LaunchIt while the AWARE:ACCESS program helps minority entrepreneurs, like Gebru, write more competitive grant proposals and hone their customer relations skills.

“I think this kidney project demonstrates the clear and distinct value of each of these three funding mechanisms,” said Rob Keynton, director of Research Initiatives in the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and lead investigator of the three awards. “Together, the awards help UofL faculty and students figure out their potential customer base, secure funding and get their innovations to the marketplace.”