Rate My Professor Koen Van Den Abeele

Koen Van Den Abeele is a full professor in the Faculty of Science at KU Leuven, serving in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Kulak Kortrijk Campus. He holds key administrative roles including Head of Physics at Kulak Kortrijk Campus, Chairman of the Group Science, Engineering and Technology at Kulak, Head of Student Policy at Kulak Kortrijk Campus, and Head of the Subdivision Ultrasonic Spectroscopy for Non-destructive Testing within the Division Acoustics and Thermal Physics. He obtained his Master’s degree in Mathematics from KU Leuven in 1987 and his PhD in Physics from KU Leuven in 1992. Van Den Abeele leads the Wave Propagation and Signal Processing (WPSP) research laboratory at Kulak, focusing his work on nonlinear acoustics, micro-damage diagnostics, damage localisation, materials characterisation, damage monitoring, constitutive equations, modelling wave propagation, nonlinear wave spectroscopy, and analysis of strong ground motion.

His research extends to nondestructive testing (NDT) of materials, ultrasound wave propagation, structural health monitoring (SHM), guided waves, wave finite element methods, thermosonics, proton range verification using phase-change nanodroplets, radiation-sensitive ultrasound contrast agents, and machine learning-based material characterization. With over 260 publications and more than 5,800 citations, his scholarly impact is substantial. Key publications include “Broadband nonlinear RAPID: a baseline-free probabilistic imaging approach for single-defect localization using a sparse sensor network” (Ma et al., 2025, NDT & E International), “Semi-analytical hybrid modeling of wave propagation for high-efficiency ultrasound inspection in large plate-like structures” (Mardanshahi et al., 2025, Smart Materials and Structures), “A novel interpolation-based method for solving the one-dimensional wave equation on a domain with a moving boundary” (Lassuyt et al., 2025, Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Physik), “Phase-change ultrasound contrast agents for proton range verification: towards an in vivo application” (Carlier et al., 2024, Physics in Medicine and Biology), and “Analytic prediction of droplet vaporization events to estimate the precision of ultrasound-based proton range verification” (Collado-Lara et al., 2023, Medical Physics). His contributions advance ultrasonic techniques in materials science and biomedical applications.