Category: Research & Innovation

University of Florida scientists will use artificial intelligence technology to quantify damage to fruits and vegetables caused by extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Ian.

A team of scientists including researchers from UF were awarded a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to support the development of new state-of-the-art water quality data and models to better predict and manage harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee River watersheds.

A multidisciplinary University of Florida research team, headed by Lakiesha Williams, Ph.D., will test what researchers hope will be a dural graft option less likely to succumb to structural compromise and harmful immunological outcomes.

Chris A. Malachowsky (UF BSEE ’80) co-founder and NVIDIA Fellow of visual computer graphics vanguard NVIDIA, has made a philanthropic commitment to position UF as a national leader in AI education and research.

Each researcher was awarded a five-year, $1.8+ million award. MIRA awards provide investigators with greater stability and flexibility in funding, while enhancing their ability to take on ambitious scientific projects and approach problems more creatively.

Denise R. Simmons, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering and associate dean for Workforce Development in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, is the leading principal investigator for the $1.28 million, four-year project “Critical Conversations: Systemic and Agentic Empowerment of Black Ph.D. Students and their Faculty Advisors in Engineering,” which is sponsored by the Racial Equity in STEM Education program, an initiative of the National Science Foundation’s Education and Human Resources (EHR) division that supports racial equity in STEM.

Kiley Graim, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, is leading a $1.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute study with co-investigator James Cahill, Ph.D., an assistant instructional professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences. Their grant seeks to create a valuable tool that will allow researchers to diagnose human cancers, potentially leading to earlier clinical interventions.

New research reveals that expertly timed lasers shined at an approaching lidar system can create a blind spot in front of the vehicle large enough to completely hide moving pedestrians and other obstacles. The deleted data causes the cars to think the road is safe to continue moving along, endangering whatever may be in the attack’s blind spot.

Juan Gilbert, Ph.D., the Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor and department chair of CISE, has spent 19 years inventing “the most secure voting technology ever created.”

As the University of Florida celebrates an ambitious landmark achievement of surpassing $1 billion in research expenditures, the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering would like to share how our eminent faculty and researchers—working side-by-side with our students—have helped contribute more than $131 million to that tally over the past year.