Category: Research & Innovation

A University of Florida Transportation Institute (UFTI) study funded by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) found that advanced communication technologies and vehicle on-board units (OBUs) are effective in increasing driver awareness. These technologies provide information to drivers regarding their surroundings, such as the presence of pedestrians and traffic signal information.

Kristy Boyer, Ph.D., and Mehmet Celepkolu, Ph.D.Researchers from the University of Florida were recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore how to integrate AI learning into middle school science through natural language processing (NLP). Investigators will work with teachers and students at middle schools in Florida and Indiana.

With $3 million in government funding through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a team of UF researchers led by Christine Angelini, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Coastal Solutions, along with colleagues in ESSIE, is giving the Corps a sustainable framework for water resources engineering projects on Florida’s First Coast. The multidisciplinary team hopes to provide these ecosystems the protection necessary to withstand and even thrive under unpredictable climatic conditions and the burden of their many uses — commercial, residential, recreational and tourism.

Researchers at the University of Florida, including Fan Ren, Ph.D., a distinguished professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, have helped develop a COVID-19 testing device that can detect coronavirus infection in as little as 30 seconds as sensitively and accurately as a PCR.

University of Florida researchers have invented a test that can determine within 10-15 minutes whether patients test positive for COVID and, if so, which of the five known variants of concern they have.

On any given day, Gainesville’s Autonomous Shuttle (AV) can be seen driving around city streets. AV shuttle corridors across the country are mostly designed without traffic lights, or the shuttles are maneuvered through traffic lights manually by an attendant. However, the Gainesville AV can now communicate with traffic signals and make right or left turns without the assistance of a human operator.

Using a new $2.8 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), researchers in the University of Florida Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) will work to augment human cognition by providing task guidance through augmented reality (AR) headset technology in extreme environments, including high hazard and risky operations.

ECE professors Sandip Ray, Ph.D. and Swarup Bhunia, Ph.D. have successfully capped a four-year chip design research project with the development of a revolutionized microchip security module, making hardware patchable.

A team from the University of Florida’s Thompson Earth Systems Institute (TESI), the College of Education and the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering will partner with the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland on a three-year, $1.3 million project funded by the National Science Foundation to teach Florida middle school teachers and students how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify fossil shark teeth.

How Damon Woodard, Ph.D., rose from being a high school dropout to become the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Notre Dame is a testament to the people who believed in him — and to the inner fire that refused to go out.