The University of Florida announced a second round of seven projects related to artificial intelligence (AI), innovation and technology that will receive strategic funding awarded by the state Legislature.
The university received $130 million in new funding from the Florida Legislature and, for the first time, as established by UF President Ben Sasse, over half will be used for strategic purposes. In October, a total of $9.2 million was awarded to an initial round of 19 projects for strategic initiatives related to student experience, research and technology.
The second round of awardees, like the first, were chosen based on their impacts on student experience and research productivity and will receive a combined $5,352,990 from the university.
“These proposals will help take UF to the next level. Each of these bold initiatives will enhance the future of Florida and the world,” said Sasse in a news release. “We’re committed to being both elite and practical. I couldn’t be prouder of the way our incredible units at UF are putting this strategic funding to good use. We want to tackle big challenges and these projects are the kind of ambitious, interdisciplinary, and collaborative work that only a large, comprehensive, land-grant university like ours can do.”
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Additional proposals chosen for the second round of funding will be announced on Dec. 4 and Dec. 18. A third group of submissions — which includes proposals related to space science, data and business, among others — has been marked for potential funding and is currently undergoing a preliminary feasibility study.
University officials initially asked for proposals from colleges for how the funding could best be spent, and UF received over 250 submissions for initiatives that could be used to improve education at UF. A total of $50 million was made available to all colleges and administrative units to submit the proposals and an additional $24 million was given directly to deans to report back on their strategic uses of funds.
The university said in its first announcement that all colleges will participate in a strategic funding investment. It also said the goal of Sasse’s funding initiative is to increase interdisciplinary scholarship at the university and to make the student experience better.
The second round of funding will support the following:
- UF/IFAS — Innovation hub for urban pest management, $985,000 over three years. Funding will support the $2.2 billion industry in Florida through workforce development, expanding industry partnerships and innovating new control technologies for invasive pests.
- College of Veterinary Medicine, UF Health — Creating an AI-enabled digital imaging platform for veterinary medicine and One Health, $750,000 over three years. An investment in an AI-enabled digital imaging platform will address bottlenecks in the pathway to implementing personalized cancer diagnoses and treatments, including the scarcity of veterinary pathologists and the heterogeneous nature of cancer disorders.
- College of the Arts, supported by UF/IFAS — Arts impact engine, $1,005,790 over four years. Support for a research team-building initiative will help faculty and students write competitive proposals for external funding opportunities, advancing UF’s fast-growing and highly grant-funded arts program.
- College of the Arts, Center for Arts in Medicine, UF Health — Journal of Arts in Health, $79,500 over three years. As the Center for Arts in Medicine creates the global field of Arts in Public Health, this initiative will launch a new open-access journal for the industry that will cement UF’s place as a leader in integrating arts and public health.
- College of Medicine, Jacksonville — Center for Convening Transformative Care, $1,098,700 over three years. Funding for the center will help enhance personalized patient care, increase patient safety, foster population health data research and grant procurement, and strengthen local and state partnerships that will lead to more sustainable population health interventions.
- Fixel Institute (supported by the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, the College of Public Health & Health Professions, the College of Nursing, the College of Medicine, the College of Health and Human Performance, and the College of the Arts) — Research & Technology Innovation Incubator, $960,000 for one year. An investment in the Fixel Institute will transform 20,000 square feet of unrenovated space into a state-of-the-art hub for interdisciplinary work.
- Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, supported by the College of Education and the College of Design, Construction, and Planning — Leveraging the power of large language models, $474,000 over two years. Support for the project will help develop a large language model-based software tool to leverage the computing-intensive capabilities of HiPerGator, collecting beneficial data for instructors and administrators about student performance.
