A cross-disciplinary partnership at UF
Anchored within the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and developed in strategic partnership with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), the Florida Physical AI Initiative connects researchers across engineering, agriculture, computing, and related disciplines to advance Physical AI research and applications.
Participating Researchers
9 departments • 40+ researchers
Dr. Changying ‘Charlie’ Li
Leads research in agricultural robotics, AI-driven high-throughput phenotyping, 3D computer vision, and autonomous field scanning platforms.
Dr. Henry Medeiros
Investigates computer vision, robotic perception, agricultural automation, spatio-temporal sensing, and sub-canopy robotic navigation.
Dr. Daeun ‘Dana’ Choi
Specializes in mechatronics, synthetic data and digital twins for crop robotics, machine vision, and autonomous orchard inspection platforms.
Dr. Yiannis Ampatzidis
Focuses on precision agriculture, drone-based aerial sensing, and automated agricultural pest/disease vision systems.
Dr. Tom Burks
Researches agricultural robotics, automated harvesting end-effectors, mechanical manipulation, and precision sorting.
Dr. Aysegul Gunduz
Specializes in neural engineering, brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), closed-loop deep brain stimulation, and neuro-motor state decoding.
Dr. Mingzhou Ding
Researches cognitive neurodynamics, physiological signal processing, and human-autonomy interaction modeling.
Dr. Kyle Allen
Investigates joint biomechanics, non-invasive motor function evaluation, osteoarthritis models, and automated musculoskeletal gait tracking.
Dr. Lily Elefteriadou
Directs research in connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) traffic management, intelligent transportation systems, and algorithmic intersection control.
Dr. Sara Behdad
Specializes in remanufacturing engineering, circular economy cyber-physical systems, automated disassembly robotics, and AI-enabled product life-cycle analytics.
Dr. Eric Jing Du
Investigates human-robot collaboration in construction, cognitive load telemetry for field operators, robotics for built environments, and civil infrastructure automation.
Dr. David Kaplan
Researches ecohydrology, watershed dynamics, hydrodynamic sensor telemetry, and environmental systems modeling.
Dr. Prabhat Mishra
Researches embedded systems architecture, hardware-software co-design, post-silicon validation, IoT security, and energy-aware on-chip AI acceleration.
Dr. Sara Rampazzi
Investigates cyber-physical systems security, hardware sensor spoofing/injection attacks, and resilient perception for autonomous vehicles and medical devices.
Dr. Anand Rangarajan
Focuses on computer vision, medical imaging, physics-informed machine learning, and video-based scene analysis for physical environments.
Dr. Eakta Jain
Specializes in human-robot interaction, visual attention modeling, eye tracking, and embodied user-agent interfaces.
Dr. Sanmay Das
Investigates multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning dynamics, and distributed decision algorithms for interacting physical agents.
Dr. Christophe Bobda
Specializes in reconfigurable FPGA architectures, System-on-Chip (SoC) acceleration, bio-inspired event cameras, neuromorphic edge vision, and zero-trust hardware security.
Dr. Swarup Bhunia
Focuses on microelectronic hardware security, hardware root-of-trust, bio-inspired edge sensors, and supply chain integrity for autonomous platforms.
Dr. Mark Tehranipoor
Specializes in hardware security and trust, anti-counterfeiting microelectronics, physical unclonable functions (PUFs), and zero-trust silicon foundations for secure embodied devices.
Dr. Sanjeev Koppal
Focuses on computational photography, physics-based vision, active illumination, foveated depth sensing, and novel optical sensors for robotics.
Dr. Md Jahidul Islam
Investigates underwater robotics, marine physical AI, vision-guided marine perception, robust robotic SLAM, and image restoration in turbid aquatic environments.
Dr. Sandip Ray
Researches formal verification, system-level hardware security, Internet of Battlefield
Things (IoBT), and trustworthy firmware/SoC architectures for autonomous cyber-physical systems.
Dr. Ivan Ruchkin
Focuses on trustworthy cyber-physical systems, multi-model uncertainty quantification, runtime verification, and safety-assurance frameworks for autonomous mobile robots.
Dr. Jie Fu
Investigates formal methods, dynamic game theory, reinforcement learning with temporal logic guarantees, motion synthesis, and secure autonomous planning in adversarial environments.
Dr. Farimah Farahmandi
Specializes in hardware security assurance, formal verification of microelectronic circuits, pre-silicon security validation, and vulnerability detection in autonomous hardware platforms.
Dr. Eric Schwartz
Leads autonomous mobile robotics development, machine vision integration, multi-sensor embedded payloads, and student-driven unmanned vehicle platforms (SubjuGator, NaviGator).
Dr. Joel Harley
Investigates ultrasonic and acoustic signal processing, physics-informed acoustic wave modeling, and edge structural health monitoring.
Dr. Herman Lam
High-performance reconfigurable computing, FPGA-based hardware accelerators, hardware-software co-design, and parallel processing architectures for edge computing.
Dr. Alina Zare
Specializes in pattern recognition, physics-guided machine learning, sub-surface acoustic/radar sensing, hyperspectral imaging, and embodied plant root phenotyping.
Dr. Rickard Ewetz
Electronic design automation (EDA), in-memory computing architectures, emerging resistive crossbars (ReRAM/memristors), and energy-efficient edge acceleration for physical AI.
Dr. Xiaoyi Lu
High-performance computing (HPC), AI systems, distributed storage, RDMA network communication, and low-latency data pipelines bridging supercomputers (HiPerGator) to autonomous edge fleets.
Dr. Mingyi Ji
Large-scale distributed optimization, federated edge learning, non-convex stochastic optimization, and communication-efficient learning algorithms for multi-agent autonomous systems.
Dr. Iris V. Rivero
Leads research in advanced and cyber-physical manufacturing systems, biomaterials fabrication, smart additive manufacturing, and automated closed-loop fabrication processes.
Dr. Eric MacDonald
Specializes in multi-process additive manufacturing, structural electronics embedding, in-situ sensor monitoring for industrial automation, and closed-loop process control.
Dr. Boyi Hu
Focuses on human factors engineering, physical human-robot interaction (pHRI), ergonomic biomechanics, and wearable sensor analytics.
Dr. Mostafa Reisi-Gahrooei
Specializes in sensor-based process modeling, data analytics for advanced manufacturing, and quality control in cyber-physical systems.
Dr. Jorge A. Sefair
Investigates network optimization, disaster response logistics, and resilient infrastructure routing under uncertainty.
Dr. Yu Wang
Specializes in cyber-physical systems, formal methods, safety-critical autonomous control, dynamic game theory, and multi-robot motion planning under safety constraints.
Dr. Carl Crane
Specializes in kinematic analysis, spatial mechanics, automated ground vehicle navigation, and mechanical manipulator design for unstructured physical environments.
Dr. Peter Ifju
Researches unmanned aerial systems (UAS), micro air vehicles (MAVs), composite structures, and aerodynamic sensing under severe turbulence.
Dr. Katerina Aifantis
Investigates mechanics of nanomaterials, predictive material modeling, biomechanical scaffolds, and battery degradation under physical stress.
Dr. Richard Hennig
Specializes in computational materials design, physics-informed machine learning for material discovery, and high-throughput atomistic simulations.
Dr. Jennifer Andrew
Researches multiferroic composites, magnetic nanomaterials, and responsive nanocomposites for embodied sensing and actuation.
Dr. Juan Claudio Nino
Focuses on functional electroceramics, radiation detection materials, and dielectric substrates for harsh-environment sensors.
Dr. Michael Tonks
Investigates mesoscale materials modeling, microstructure coevolution, and predictive degradation analysis in extreme operating environments.
Dr. James Baciak
Directs research in radiation detection instrumentation, non-destructive evaluation, autonomous radiation surveillance rovers, and homeland security telemetry.
Dr. Andreas Enqvist
Specializes in nuclear safeguards, neutron/gamma detection algorithms, nuclear materials verification, and extreme-field robotic sensing.
Dr. Assel Aitkaliyeva
Investigates nuclear fuels and materials characterization, microstructural degradation under irradiation, and materials in extreme environments.
Dr. DuWayne Schubring
Focuses on reactor thermal hydraulics, multiphase flow dynamics, and quantitative flow visualization for reactor safety systems.
Join the Researcher Directory
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