{"id":42923,"date":"2026-05-06T15:42:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/?p=42923"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:45:13","slug":"gator-engineer-alumnus-inspires-graduates-go-forward-with-confidence-gratitude-and-curiosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/alumni-spotlight\/gator-engineer-alumnus-inspires-graduates-go-forward-with-confidence-gratitude-and-curiosity\/","title":{"rendered":"Gator Engineer Alumnus inspires graduates: \u2018Go forward with confidence, gratitude and curiosity\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Chris Malachowsky, one of the \u2014 if not the \u2014 most famous University of Florida engineering graduates, returned to his home Swamp as a keynote university-wide commencement speaker on May 1, celebrating his failures, his successes, his beloved Gators and a bright future where engineers and artificial intelligence coexist and thrive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou have been educated at a university that understood early that AI is not just a computer science topic. It touches practically all areas of the economy, society and government,\u201d Malachowsky said in his address.&nbsp; \u201cThat is why I am optimistic about this class. You are not walking into the AI era empty-handed. You are walking into it better prepared than most of your peers.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While he was here, he also stopped by his namesake building, Malachowsky Hall for Data Science and Information Technology, to meet with the <a href=\"https:\/\/ece.ufl.edu\/2026\/01\/23\/three-ece-faculty-members-awarded-new-malachowsky-professorships\/\">three faculty members in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who were given a Malachowsky professorship.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ufl.edu\/2026\/05\/malachowskyspeech\/\">See and read Malachowsky\u2019s full commencement address at UF News.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Malachowsky, one of the \u2014 if not the \u2014 most famous University of Florida engineering graduates, returned to his home Swamp as a keynote university-wide commencement speaker on May 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":42925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-full-width-image.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"off","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,57],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-42923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight","category-stories","tag-chris-malachowsky"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42931,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42923\/revisions\/42931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}