Dear colleagues, alumni and friends,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to our latest newsletter. As we approach the end of the academic year, we want to celebrate our successes, share our ongoing work, and look ahead to the future of our department.

I want to begin by highlighting the outstanding contributions of our esteemed faculty who have been recognized for their exceptional research and teaching excellence. Recently, the National Science Foundation (NSF) selected a team of scientists from the University of Florida and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to lead a $20 million institute to advance AI to promote STEM education. Kristy E. Boyer, Ph.D., will be the institute’s managing director. Eakta Jain, Ph.D., conducted a year of fieldwork observing the special interactions between horses and humans to learn more about building robots designed to improve our lives. She recently presented her findings at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)  Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hamburg, Germany.

We are also proud to feature stories about our faculty receiving prestigious awards and grants. Kejun Huang, Ph.D., received an NSF CAREER Award to tackle AI’s unsupervised learning challenges. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has elected 19 faculty from the University of Florida, including Prabhat Mishra, Ph.D., to its newest class of Fellows.  Sumi Helal, Ph.D., was named an ACM Fellow for his contributions to mobile and pervasive computing and their applications in graceful aging and accessibility.

I’d also like to highlight the exceptional achievements of our students who have distinguished themselves through their academic excellence, leadership, and community engagement. Patriel Stapleton, a Ph.D. student, was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Her research investigates how game-based learning simulations can be used to effectively teach middle-school students about complex topics. Aysegul Bumin, a Ph.D. student, along with her team received the best student paper award at the 13th ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics. The student group Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WiCSE) hosted its annual Middle and High School Code-A-Thon. The group welcomed about 35 Gainesville-area middle and high school students for a day of interactive and educational computer science workshops.

I am pleased to announce that our computer engineering graduate program has improved its ranking in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings among public graduate engineering programs. Our program has risen to No. 13 among public universities nationwide from its previous ranking of No. 15, reflecting our continued efforts to enhance the quality of our graduate education and research. This success is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our faculty, staff, and students who have contributed to the program’s growth and success.

I would like to express my gratitude to all members of the CISE community for your contributions and commitment to our shared goals in our pursuit of academic excellence and community engagement. I encourage you to stay connected with each other and to continue supporting our department’s mission in the months and years ahead. Together, we can build a brighter future for our students, our department, and our society.

Sincerely,

Juan E. Gilbert, Ph.D.
The Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor
CISE Department Chair