The newsletter highlights our ongoing activities and accomplishments, not only on the research front but also on education and outreach. We hope to keep you up-to-date on the broad research activities within the Institute, as well as provide opportunities for collaboration. We look forward to connecting with you.
Swarup Bhunia, Director, Distinguished Professor & Semmoto Endowed Chair Professor of Internet of Things, ECE
My T. Thai, Associate Director & UF Research Foundation Professor, CISE
 | Director Swarup Bhunia Elevated to Distinguished Professor Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, has received the distinction of Distinguished Professor. One of UF’s highest faculty honors, this title is awarded to faculty members whose accomplishments have achieved national and international prominence through exceptional research, teaching, publication and service. |
 | Save the Date for the 2026 Warren B. Nelms Annual IoT Conference! The fourth Warren B. Nelms Annual IoT Conference will be held on December 3-4, 2026 at the University of Florida campus. The conference will have a variety of keynote speakers, industry panels, and student poster and demo sessions. |
 | Santa Fe College Instructors Engage in Hands-On AI Safety Training Through the NASA-funded TRANSCEND project, a team of researchers is working toward establishing a future workforce trained in artificial intelligence (AI) safety. During a hands-on training session, eight Santa Fe College instructors learned about foundational AI concepts using the Nelms Institute-developed AHA board platform. Dr. Sandip Ray, lead of the project, said, “Our goal is to integrate these ideas across different areas in all the community colleges in Florida.” |
 | Thinking Out Loud: EEG-Enabled Communication Allows Users to ‘write with their thoughts’ Millions of people with medical conditions that limit mobility or speech are unable to easily communicate with the world around them. This project aims to change that by enabling communication directly from brain activity. The work develops a system that can read brain signals and convert them into written characters. |
 | Paper on Autism Detection Using LLMs Receives 3rd Place at AMIA Amplify Summit PhD student Sudipta Paria has received the Certificate of Outstanding Merit, a distinction awarded to selected international students in recognition of their exceptional achievements and contributions to the UF community. |
 | Ivan Ruchkin Receives the IEEE TC CPS Early Career Award The award recognizes early-career contributions to the field of cyber-physical systems, an area at the intersection of automation, autonomy, safety-critical systems and control. Ruchkin’s research focuses on improving the safety and reliability of learning-enabled cyber-physical systems, including trustworthy monitoring, system verification and neural-network controller repair. |
 | Md Jahidul Islam Receives the ONR Young Investigator Award Islam received the 2026 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, an honor recognizing innovative research with strong potential to advance national defense. Islam’s research focuses on developing artificial intelligence systems that enable autonomy of marine robots in challenging environments. |
 | A hardware neural network backdoor that hides in plain sight Deep learning systems on phones, cars, and other edge devices increasingly run on custom silicon with specialized chips such as FPGAs and ASICs. Many of these chips come from third-party design houses and foundries, which adds steps to the supply chain where an outside party can alter a device. Researchers at the University of Tennessee and the University of Florida built an attack that takes advantage of this arrangement. |
 | Join the IoT Students Club! Discover the exciting world of the Internet of Things! This is a great opportunity to get involved with real-world research, connect with faculty and industry professionals, and contribute to events connected to the UF Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World including the annual IoT Conference. UF students of all years, majors, and experience levels are welcome. |
 | View Research Portfolio We invite you to browse our current and ongoing research projects. Our research addresses major world challenges relating to public health, energy, education, transportation, and more. We envision a future where people, things, processes, and data are connected in a more intelligent, more energy efficient, and more secure way. |