The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World at the University of Florida is pleased to announce our second Annual IoT Conference, to be held December 5-6, 2024 at Malachowsky Hall, University of Florida campus, in Gainesville, FL. Theme: Secure and Intelligent Internet of Things for Solving Global Problems   About The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the ...

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)—combining AI with IoT devices—and its applications are of paramount importance in the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, which is marked by the seamless fusion of physical and digital systems. Demand for a well-trained workforce in this area has been steadily increasing. But access to hands-on hardware-focused AI learning experiences has been ...

Dr. Bianca Burini is an Assistant Professor in the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory at University of Florida and a new member of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. Dr. Burini’s research centers around combatting vector-borne diseases, which are transferred through blood-feeding anthropods like mosquitos. The research encompasses a diverse array of pathogens, including ...

Recently, more and more tech companies are moving their data centers to an unlikely place — the ocean. Companies are taking the plunge underwater in order to harness the natural cooling properties of ocean water, therefore significantly reducing energy costs and emissions. But with the new location comes new vulnerabilities. Researchers at the Warren B. Nelms ...

ECE Assistant Professor Ivan Ruchkin has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his project “Neuro-Symbolic Bridge: From Perception to Estimation & Control.” The project aims to enhance the safety and reliability of cyber-physical systems (CPS) by developing methods to repair the mismatch between neural network outputs (the raw data) and the downstream ...

In this Tech Tuesday video for WCJB TV20, UF Innovate’s Bethany Gaffey interviews Dr. Sandip Ray about the VETS-HASTE program, which supports local veterans by training them in hardware security. This innovative initiative provides veterans with the tools to transition into civilian life by training them in the security of silicon chips and devices—skills that are ...

Team UF NanoKnights, comprised of three Nelms Institute students, won 1st Place in the HACK@DAC 2024 Competition. The members of the team are PhD students Sudipta Paria, Atri Chatterjee, and Aritra Dasgupta. The team is advised by Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Professor at the University of Florida and Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for ...

Dr. Zhe Jiang, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science and Engineering, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to fund the project, “Collaborative Research: OAC Core: Learning AI Surrogate of Large-Scale Spatiotemporal Simulations for Coastal Circulation.” This project aims to train a novel AI surrogate cyberinfrastructure to generate large-scale simulations of ...

Mapping subsea structures and surveying seabeds is normally a time-consuming and complex process done manually. However, Dr. Md Jahidul Islam and his RoboPI lab have designed an autonomous underwater robot, NemoSens, to do the job efficiently. The team recently deployed NemoSens in the Gulf of Mexico, demonstrating the capabilities of the robot in the video ...

UF smart sensor sends smartphone alert if mending patient is too daring on their feet GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A physician isn’t going to follow a patient home to ensure they’re doing as instructed and not placing weight on a surgically repaired foot. “Sometimes someone swears they didn’t put weight on their foot, but then they come to ...

UF teaching veterans how to hack In May, 11 U.S. veterans gathered at the University of Florida to learn how to hack into computer systems. With the intensity and persistence of a shady cyber-criminal, the Florida veterans learned – through trial and much error – how to invade protected computer networks and become serious cyber-security threats. What’s more, ...

Computer Engineering undergraduate student Carson Sobolewski is the recipient of the 2024 ECE Undergraduate Student Research Excellence award. The award is given yearly to the top ECE undergraduate student who has excelled in their research during the academic year. Students are nominated by their faculty advisor. Sobolewski has worked on several research projects under the mentorship ...

Three undergraduate students in the Warren B. Nelms Institute have received a 2024 University Scholars Program (USP) award to work on IoT-related research under the mentorship of Dr. Aaron Costin. The USP serves as a way to introduce undergraduate students to the world of academic research. University Scholars commit 8-10 hours per week on a ...

Photo from left: Dr. Philip Feng, Dr. Mark Sheplak, Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian A diverse team led by three ECE Florida faculty members is set to receive funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and fabricate dynamic pressure sensors capable of performing at temperatures upwards of 800 °C (1472 °F), over a factor ...

Wireless charging has become popular in recent years for portable electronics such as smartphones and smart watches due to its convenience. The existing wireless charging Qi standard has integrated measures to protect systems’ security. However in a recent paper, Dr. Shuo Wang and his team have disclosed hidden security and privacy vulnerabilities of smartphone wireless ...

Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, has been named a University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) Professor of 2024. This year, UFRF awarded the distinction to 34 faculty members who have a distinguished current record of research and a strong research agenda. Dr. Bhunia is the Semmoto Endowed ...

Underwater data centers (UDCs) hold promise as next-generation data storage due to their energy efficiency and environmental sustainability benefits. While the natural cooling properties of water save power, the isolated aquatic environment and long-range sound propagation characteristics in water create unique vulnerabilities which differ from those of on-land data centers. In this new work called Aquasonic, ...

In Fall 2023, the course EGN1935 – Special Topics in Freshmen Engineering: Adventures in ECE Design provided students with an immersive, hands-on experience in exploring AI hardware principles and applications. It was instructed by Dr. Swarup Bhunia and PhD students Andrea Ramírez-Salgado and Atri Chatterjee. The course was designed with the goal of making AI education ...

Dr. Yuheng Bu is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and a new member of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. Dr. Bu’s research interests lie in the intersection of machine learning, information theory and signal processing. He leverages the tools from information theory and signal processing to develop theoretically justified learning algorithms ...

Researchers Dr. My T. Thai, Associate Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute; Dr. Yan Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning; and Dr. Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, professor in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology, have received a new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The project, titled, “Collaborative Research: SaTC: ...

The IoT Students Club hosted a Hands-On Hardware Workshop for fellow students on February 26, 2024. The goal of the workshop was to help students learn about sensor fusion and gain hands-on experience designing an IoT system with AI capabilities. IoT Students Club, an organization affiliated with the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, ...

On February 14, 2024, University of Florida students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee for Gator Day. The annual event provides an opportunity for UF faculty and students to present their research and engage in conversations with legislators and esteemed leaders from throughout the state of Florida. The event included table ...

Recent research by Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian and his team has been featured on the cover of the February issue of Nature Electronics. The research was published in a paper, titled “A ferroelectric-gate fin microwave acoustic spectral processor,” which explores the use of 3D nanomechanical resonators to enhance the efficiency of ultrawide-band wireless communication. Dr. Tabrizian ...

A new collaborative research project will use AI to facilitate mathematics education in an interactive and unique way. “SALT-Math: Scalable AI-Augmented Learning by Teaching for Math Education” aims to revolutionize K-12 mathematics learning by implementing a learning-by-teaching framework that uses a large language model to flip students’ roles as teachers to AI agents (resulting in ...

Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, has been elevated to the rank of life fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of the ...

Are you looking for a summer undergraduate research internship? REU: Secure, Accessible, and Sustainable Transportation (SAST) Recent years are seeing a transformative and rapid push towards autonomy in the transportation systems, driven by explosive infusion of electronics, sensors, and software. Autonomous transportation holds out the promise of dramatically improving transportation system by reducing and eventually eliminating human ...

ECE Florida Assistant Professor Baoyun Ge has received an NSF CAREER Award for his project “Guided Exploration of Multiphysics Design Space for Electric Machines Using Tensorial Analysis (GEOMETRY).” The $550k project will help Dr. Ge explore the performance boundaries of electric machines in order to continue the fight against climate change and excessive carbon emissions. Given ...

A recent publication in Nature Electronics highlights work on extremely energy-efficient broadband communication in distributed wireless brain implants spearheaded by ECE Florida Assistant Professor Baibhab Chatterjee. The research has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of neurological and behavioral disorders. Dr. Baibhab Chatterjee The work, begun when Dr. Chatterjee was a doctoral student at Purdue University, working with Dr. ...

Two Warren B. Nelms Institute faculty members have received 2023 International Educator of the Year Awards, presented by The University of Florida International Center. The International Educator of the Year Awards honor the outstanding contributions of faculty and staff to the internationalization of the University of Florida and the impact of those contributions on students, ...

A great time was had by all at the Nelms Institute Bowling Event on December 6, 2023 at the Reitz Union Game Room. Nelms Institute students, faculty, and their families enjoyed bowling, pizza, and networking during the event. Thanks to everyone who came out! We can’t wait to host another bowling event soon.

Students from the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World have placed 1st and 2nd place in competition events at CSAW 2023. CSAW (see-SAW) is the world’s most comprehensive student-run cybersecurity event. It serves as an engaging platform for experiential learning and aims to inspire students to pursue education and careers in the field ...

On November 3, 2023, the University of Florida held a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology. Malachowsky Hall will serve as a multidisciplinary space for medicine, pharmacy and engineering, and will further support UF’s work to integrate AI across the curriculum. As the new ...

Dr. Mostafa Reisi Gahrooei, Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to fund the project, “Collaborative Research: Multi-Agent Adaptive Data Collection for Automated Post-Disaster Rapid Damage Assessment.” This project aims to develop a novel framework for data collection that is able to constantly analyze observations ...

Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, has been inducted into the HOST Hall of Fame. The IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST) Hall of Fame was created to honor individuals who have significantly contributed to HOST and hardware security. Dr. Bhunia has been ...

As the growing demand for portable consumer electronics increases, researchers are faced with the challenge of having to fit more power into less space on a device. Limitations on the physical size, complexity, efficiency, and manufacturability of small-scale transistors introduce even more obstacles. A newly published paper by Warren B. Nelms Institute researchers aims to address ...

Dr. Ruogu Fang and collaborators have secured a significant National Science Foundation grant for their project, “NCS-FO: Brain-Inspired Goal-Oriented and Bidirectional Deep Emotion Inference.” This pioneering initiative at the intersection of neuroscience and AI will explore groundbreaking advancements in both fields by building neuroscience-informed, brain-inspired AI systems to sense emotion as the human brain does. The ...

A new project led by Warren B. Nelms Institute researchers has received $1 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) Program. The project, titled “Pivots: VETS-HASTE: Veterans SkillBridge through Industry based Hardware Security Training and Education,” is led by Principal Investigator Dr. Wanli Xing (College of ...

This past summer, nine undergraduate students visiting from institutions around the country spent 10 weeks conducting research at the University of Florida (UF) on the topic of Secure, Accessible, and Sustainable Transportation (SAST). Through an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site grant, the undergraduate students worked alongside UF faculty and graduate student researchers at the ...

A project led by Dr. Md Jahidul Islam titled “Underwater Robot Navigation and Localization During Recovery by Optical Homing and Penning” received $600K in funding by the NSF Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) program. Along with collaborators Dr. Sanjeev Koppal (ECE) and Dr. Jane Shin (MAE), this project will solve the foundational problem of underwater ...

ECE Florida Associate Professor Sanjeev J. Koppal has received $1M in funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in support of his project “Rapid High-Resolution Target Aerial Detection and Tracking through Deep Foveated Imaging.” The project seeks to improve the imaging abilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), allowing them to quickly and efficiently detect ...

Dr. Yan Wang, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, has received a $457k award from National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of the project, “Spatial Explanation and Planning for Resilience of Community-Based Small Businesses to Environmental Shocks.” This project aims to gain a better understanding of how spatial factors affect ...

Team Bitwise Bandits, comprised of students from the University of Florida (UF) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur), has won 3rd Place in the 6th HACK@DAC Hardware Security Capture-the-Flag (CTF) Competition. The members of the team are: Sudipta Paria and Aritra Dasgupta (UF), and Rajat Sadhukhan and Arnab Bag (IIT Kharagpur). The ...

Battery-related concerns are one of the major hurdles to the wide adoption of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV). A newly published paper by Warren B. Nelms Institute researchers aims to address these concerns with SAVIOR, an innovative Internet-of-Things (IoT) framework for replenishing BEV batteries on-the-go with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and mobile charging ...

The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World has named a new Nelms Rising Star Professor, Roozbeh Tabrizian, PhD. This endowment was made possible thanks to a generous donation by David Nelms and the Nelms family. The Nelms Rising Star Professorship is awarded to junior faculty (assistant and associate professors) who have shown extraordinary promise ...

Dr. Mostafa Reisi Gahrooei, Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has received $1.18M in funding from National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of his project, “CPS: Medium: Connected Federated Farms: Privacy-Preserving Cyber Infrastructure for Collaborative Smart Farming.” This project aims to develop a novel holistic framework that allows for collaboration between ...

Archit Jaiswal is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Florida and a researcher at the Nelms Nanoscape lab. Before joining the Nelms Institute, he worked as a research and development engineer (level 2) in the defense industry, where he served as a technical lead in developing advanced systems to ...

Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World Associate Director, Dr. My T. Thai, UF Research Foundation Professor in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Department, was quoted in a new article from Government Technology about the call for a pause on AI development to allow for more responsible, trustworthy, and safer AI systems. ...

In March of 2023, the Internet of Things (IoT) Students Club hosted a group of panelists that tackled prioritizing mental health in academia. The student-run event touched on various topics such as mindfulness, navigating social media, preventing burnout, and acclimating to new environments. Among the panelists were Sabine Grunwald, Ph.D., director of the UF Mindfulness Program and professor ...

Throughout March, April and May, 2023, the Southeastern Consortium for Assured and Leading-Edge Semiconductors (SCALES) hosted a series of four virtual panel discussions on workforce development in various engineering technology areas. Each panel brought together experts across many disciplines, applications and perspectives to share their viewpoints, answer questions, debate approaches, and possibly find mutually beneficial ...

The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World has named a new Nelms Rising Star Professor. This endowment was made possible thanks to a generous donation by David Nelms and the Nelms family. The Nelms Rising Star Professorship is awarded to junior faculty (assistant and associate professors) who have shown extraordinary promise early in their ...

On April 12, 2023, University of Florida students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee for Gator Day. The annual event provides an opportunity for UF faculty and students to present their research and engage in conversations with legislators and esteemed leaders from throughout the state of Florida. The event included presentations ...

New technology is available for licensing by Drs. Aaron Costin and Janise McNair, faculty members of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. Visit UF Innovate for more information.   Multi-Access Edge Computing System for Remote Locations Provides Real-Time Monitoring and Communications for Construction Project Job Sites This multi-access edge computing system connects and coordinates signals from ...

Kejun Huang, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). His project, “Principled Unsupervised Learning via Minimum Volume Polytopic Embedding,” will focus on machine learning that addresses the challenges of unsupervised learning, which teaches the machine, or ...

With advancement in Connected, Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technology, comes new concerns for safety and security. Researchers have developed a new kind of attack which affects a CAV’s ability to accurately recognize a traffic sign. The collaborative project, “WIP: Infrared Laser Reflection Attack Against Traffic Sign Recognition Systems,” received two awards at the Inaugural Symposium on Vehicle ...

A paper authored by Warren B. Nelms Institute Associate Director, Dr. My T. Thai, and a team of researchers at University of Florida and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has won Distinguished Paper Award at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2023 Conference, held February 7-14, 2023. The paper is titled “XRand: ...

The second annual student Internet of Things (IoT) Design Competition recently wrapped up after a busy semester of competition. The international competition, hosted by the IoT Students Club at University of Florida, is sponsored by Texas Instruments, Microsoft, and the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. “IoT and its convergence with AI can help ...

On Thursday February 2, 2023, the IoT Students Club at the University of Florida hosted a panel workshop titled “How to Get Internships/Jobs at Top Companies.” The workshop featured a panel of seven current students who have secured internships or jobs at top companies in the IoT and security sectors. The student panelists offered tips and ...

In the age of ancient British mariners, the calculated standard of Greenwich Mean Time forever changed the world of circumnavigation in the 1700s by using a shipboard chronometer to help establish position relative to the Greenwich meridian, which represented zero degrees longitude. Now, a research team from the University of Florida has been tasked with ...

When a team of researchers from the University of Florida unveiled new technology that allows someone to hack into a nearby touchscreen-enabled device using what they call an “invisible finger,” those in the field of cybersecurity took notice. The discovery, publicly recognized by the Institute of Electrical and Computer Engineering during its 2022 Symposium on Security ...

Tre’ R. Jeter is a PhD Student of Computer Science working in the Adaptive Learning and Optimization Lab since Fall 2021. He is advised by Dr. My T. Thai, UF Research Foundation Professor of Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering and Associate Director of Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World at the University ...

Imagine: your car starts behaving strangely while driving. The engine stalls or the car starts veering to one side. It’s likely you’d suspect that something is amiss in the engine, or transmission, or the steering mechanism. Less likely is that you think, “My car has been hacked.” In fact, most of us rarely think of ...

Add the ‘invisible finger’ to the growing list of potential hacking attacks against which our devices need to be defended. ECE researcher Dr. Shuo Wang and his security research group at the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World have been making the rounds of late, showcasing their research to Apple, Intel, Google and the like. They also ...

Dr. Janise McNair, associate professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, gave an invited talk entitled, “IoT in Agriculture: Creating Access and Opportunity” at the IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things in the Vertical: Agriculture Track, in Yokohama, Japan. The 2022 IEEE 8th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT 2022) brings the latest from the ...

The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World has successfully secured more than $5 million in funding for education and preparation of students for careers in Internet of Things (IoT) technology, hardware security, and cybersecurity. These grants are helping to expand Warren B. Nelms Institute-led research meant to address the national skills shortage in ...

Jennifer A. Bridge, PhD, University Term Associate Professor in the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment (ESSIE), has been named a Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World Faculty Fellow. This prestigious endowed position is awarded to select faculty members at the University of Florida in recognition of outstanding service within the Institute in ...

Dr. Swarup Bhunia, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World at the University of Florida, was honored at UF Innovate | Tech Licensing’s fifth annual Standing InnOvation event with Invention of the Year for SAVIOR: A Sustainable Network of Vehicles with Near-Perpetual ...

Dr. Baoyun Ge joined the University of Florida in May 2022 as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and is a new member of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. Dr. Ge’s group focuses on reducing carbon footprint and promoting the sustainability of energy conversion systems. About 45% ...

Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate student Kelsey Horace-Herron was awarded Best Poster Award Honorable Mention at the 5th Workshop for Women in Hardware and Systems Security (WISE) on October 14, 2022 at the University of New Hampshire. Horace-Herron, who is advised by Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Nelms Institute, presented her poster on her research, ...

Faculty members from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) are collaborating with researchers from the Engineering Education Department (EED) and the College of Education (CoE) on a new National Science Foundation (NSF) project, Innovating Quantum-Inspired Learning for Undergraduates in Research and Engineering (INQUIRE). The project is led by UF and includes researchers from the University of Minnesota. The 5-year ...

Dr. Janise McNair, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Warren B. Nelms Institute member, recently authored a News & Views article published in Nature Magazine (Nature Portfolio). Dr. McNair’s article, titled “The 6G frequency switch that spares scientific services” is about sixth-generation (6G) spectrum-sharing and an experiment published in the ...

Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World and Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recently featured in a CNET article about new smartwatch technologies. Dr. Bhunia discussed research of his team on the development of an affordable wearable device on the wrist that measures skin ...

University of Florida first-year engineering students in STEPUP (Successful Transition and Enhanced Preparation for Undergraduates Program) visited the Warren B. Nelms Institute IoT Lab in July 2022 for a lab tour and research demos. STEPUP is a student success program sponsored through the Office of Student Transition and Retention, a unit of the Herbert Wertheim College ...

Prabuddha Chakraborty, a graduate student in the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, successfully defended his dissertation and earned his PhD. Dr. Chakraborty has been advised by Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute. In Fall 2022, he will join the University of Maine as an assistant professor in the Electrical ...

Dr. Ivan Ruchkin will be joining the University of Florida as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in Fall 2022. Dr. Ruchkin will also join the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. He received his PhD in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. Dr. Ruchkin’s research ...

Two Warren B. Nelms Institute faculty members from two different colleges at University of Florida received the Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors this spring. Matthew Hale, assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Yan Wang, assistant professor in the College of Design, Construction and Planning are among the winners. The prestigious award is only ...

A paper authored by Warren B. Nelms Institute faculty and PhD students has won Distinguished Paper Award at IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2022, held May 23-26, 2022. The paper, titled “Invisible Finger: Practical Electromagnetic Interference Attack on Touchscreen-based Electronic Devices” was authored by UF doctoral students Haoqi Shan, Boyi Zhang, Zihao Zhan; UF ...

As land managers and policy-makers around the state of Florida look for ways to mitigate the effects of climate change, it is becoming increasingly clear that ecosystem services—benefits provided by agricultural and natural systems—have a critical part to play. Researchers in UF’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, along with collaborators from UF/IFAS, are developing AI ...

Battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) are becoming more and more common on the roads. With rising concerns over fossil fuel depletion and the impact of traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles on the climate, electric mobility is widely considered as the future of sustainable transportation. However, drawbacks over several important battery-related issues, such as limited range, long ...

While most of us were spending our quarantine time picking up new hobbies or exploring the hidden depths of Netflix, Professor Matthew Hale was writing proposals that would eventually earn him both a Young Investigator Program (YIP) award and a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) grant this year. The YIP will be for $510,000 over ...

Prabuddha Chakraborty, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, has won first place in the semifinals of TTTC’s E. J. McCluskey Best Doctoral Thesis Award at IEEE VLSI Test Symposium 2022 (VTS 22). Chakraborty will now advance to the finals round of the competition, which will take ...

A great time was had by all at the Nelms Institute Bowling Event on March 27, 2022 at the Reitz Union Game Room. Nelms Institute students, faculty, and their families enjoyed bowling, pizza, and networking during the event. Thanks to everyone who came out! We can’t wait to host another bowling event soon.    

On April 13, 2022, around 40 students from North Port High School in Sarasota visited the Warren B. Nelms Institute IoT Lab. The students saw and participated in hands-on demos from eight Nelms Institute Graduate Students. The projects demos included secure RFID technology, a wearable health-monitoring device, automotive simulator, drone network experimentation, a fake medicine ...

Dr. Pavlo “Pasha” Antonenko, an associate professor of educational technology and director of the NeurAL Lab, was recently awarded a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to design gamified curriculum to teach computing hardware fundamentals. This collaborative grant, which includes Dr. Mary Jo Koroly, Research Associate Professor, and Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Semmoto Endowed Professor, at ...

The epiphany that emerged from UF engineering professors Swarup Bhunia and Sandip Ray was such a game-changing proposal that IEEE Spectrum, the flagship news magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, insisted that they coauthor an October 2017 feature article to unveil the concept to their two million print and online subscribers. With the rapid ...

The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World celebrated its 5th Anniversary in January 2022. Since its inception in 2017, the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World has become a national leader in the education and research on Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation. Under the leadership of Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director, and Dr. ...

Dr. Xiaochen Xian, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Warren B. Nelms Institute faculty member, and her students are currently researching new methods that can make sampling and monitoring data more efficient. These methods have significant real-world applications including COVID-19 pandemic surveillance and faster wildfire detection. Spatial Rank-Based Augmentation for Nonparametric ...

Brevin Tilmon, PhD Student at University of Florida, and Dr. Sanjeev Koppal, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, are researching adaptive resolution, which allows cameras to distribute higher resolution onto parts of images that matter most. While most other efforts on this topic apply attention within network training and testing after ...

On February 15, 2022, University of Florida students, faculty, staff and alumni gathered at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee for Gator Day. The annual event provides an opportunity for UF faculty and students to present their research and engage in conversations with legislators and esteemed leaders from throughout the state of Florida. The event included presentations ...

Dr. Sandip Ray, endowed IoT term professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Nelms Institute faculty member, has been awarded a research grant by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). The three-year grant funds research on the project “Security Assurance for Multi-tenant Accelerators.” Project Overview: Computing has been moving into the cloud.  We are no ...

In December 2021, Janise McNair, Ph.D., UF Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Warren B. Nelms Institute faculty member, was named one of 13 2021 Stars in Networking and Communications  by the N2Women (Networking Networking Women) group of the IEEE Communications Society. The N2Women’s Stars List recognizes researchers who have displayed outstanding research ...

A team of educators and researchers are working to cultivate elementary school students’ interest in cybersecurity and cryptography, the art of making and breaking codes. The interdisciplinary research team includes Dr. Pavlo “Pasha” Antonenko, Associate Professor of Educational Technology in the School of Teaching and Learning, University of Florida; Dr. Kara Dawson, Professor of Educational ...

Dr. Jie Fu, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received a 2021 Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Research Award for her project, “Towards Preference-Aware Autonomy: Specification, Synthesis, and Interactive Planning.” The goal of the AFOSR Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) is to foster creative research in science ...

A team of researchers at UF Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World were awarded Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security 2021 by IEEE Hardware Security and Trust Technical Committee (HSTTC) for their work “SAIL: Machine Learning Guided Structural Analysis Attack on Hardware Obfuscation.’’ The research team includes Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) ...

The second annual Women in IoT (WIT) Workshop, “AI on the Edge,” was held virtually on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. The women-led workshop was hosted by the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World and involved a team of organizers from multiple universities. The co-chairs of the workshop were Dr. Janise McNair, ECE, University ...

Dr. Yan Wang is an assistant professor at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, U.S.A. She is also the founding faculty of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) and directs Urban Agility and Resilience Laboratory at FIBER. Dr. Wang received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at ...

A team of researchers at the University of Florida will explore ways to increase trustworthiness and interpretability of artificial machine learning in healthcare under a new $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The team will also investigate ways to use AI to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases earlier. The project will provide a paradigm shift for ...

University of Florida researchers have received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop and host a two-week GenCyber summer camp program for high school students on the topic of hardware security. The project, titled “Hardware Security for High School Students” is a three-year project led by Dr. Wanli Xing, Assistant Professor in the School ...

The first annual student Internet of Things (IoT) Design Competition recently wrapped up after nearly two months of competition. The national competition, hosted by the IoT Students Club at University of Florida, required teams to design, build, and demonstrate the functionality of an IoT edge device to solve a real-world problem. A total of ten ...

Daniel J. Alabi, PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), has been awarded a prestigious Chateaubriand Fellowship. The Chateaubriand Fellowship is a grant offered by the Embassy of France in the United States. It supports outstanding Ph.D. students from American universities who wish to conduct research in France. Chateaubriand fellows are selected ...

Dr. Zhe Jiang joined UF in August 2021 as assistant professor in the department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), also affiliated with Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. His broad research areas are data science and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on geospatial and spatiotemporal data in the context ...

Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute, and Dr. Greg Stitt, both professors in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, are working to make hardware security education more accessible to undergraduate engineering students. The collaborative, three-year project, titled “Hardware Security Education for All Through Seamless Extension of Existing Curricula” is funded by ...

Dr. Matthew Hale, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida, recently received funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for his project “Reactive Swarm Control for Dynamic Environments.” Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple autonomous robots as a system which consists of a ...

UF researchers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to understand individual differences in treatment response and develop a first-of-its-kind precision dosing system for remediating age-related cognitive decline. The research aims to enhance the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) treatment by tailoring the treatment to each individual patient. Dr. Ruogu Fang (PI), Dr. Adam Woods (PI) ...

Dennis Agnew Jr., a Ph.D. Student in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Florida, was recently awarded the L3Harris Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship is funded by L3Harris Corporation’s generous donation to the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering to support research collaborations between the ECE and Computer and Information Science and Engineering ...

Yao Xiao earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Florida in spring 2020. She was selected as the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Commencement Student Speaker. However, due to COVID-19, commencement ceremonies were held virtually, and Xiao was not able to give her speech. One year later, in spring 2021, UF held its first ...

Troy Tharpe has received the Outstanding Paper Award in the Oral Presentation category at the Transducers 2021 Conference. Tharpe is a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Florida (ECE Florida). He is advised by Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian, an assistant professor in ECE Florida and Warren B. Nelms Institute ...

It is with deep sorrow and great respect that we announce that Warren B. Nelms, the namesake of our institute, passed away on May 16 at the age of 83. Warren Nelms was born on July 31, 1937, in Brooksville, FL, and grew up in nearby Lakeland, graduating from Lakeland High School in 1955. His innovative spirit ...

Dr. Piyush Jain, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, has recently joined the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World. His background is in pharmaceutical sciences and biomolecular engineering. In March 2021, Jain was named as holder of the Shah Rising Star Professorship for his contributions to developing a multi-scale biomolecular engineering ...

Dr. Zoleikha Biron has been awarded a Collaborative Seed Award from the Florida Center for Cybersecurity (Cyber Florida) to fund her research “Decentralized Detection of Cyber Attacks against Microgrid Energy Management Systems.” The project aims to develop the scientific foundations and the design methodologies for autonomous detection of cyber-attacks against energy management systems in microgrids. Cyber ...

There is a lack of air pollution monitoring in sub-Saharan Africa. Developing a low-cost and efficient method to conduct air monitoring in the region can help estimate exposure to air pollution for epidemiology research. Dr. Eric S. Coker, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Global Health, and faculty member of the Warren B. Nelms ...

Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian has been awarded the prestigious Director’s Fellowship from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Tabrizian, an assistant professor at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and member of the Warren B. Nelms Institute, is the first University of Florida faculty member to receive the award. Director’s Fellowships are awarded to only ...

Electrical Engineering undergraduate student Joshua Bernstein is the recipient of the 2021 ECE Undergraduate Student Research Excellence award. The award is given yearly to the top ECE undergraduate student who excelled in his/her research during the academic year. Students are nominated by their faculty advisor. Bernstein has worked on two projects in the UF Integrated Circuits ...

When COVID-19 upended our lives in early 2020, some of the brightest engineering minds across the globe got to work. Members of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World came forward to join this global task force to fight the pandemic. Using our research expertise and creativity, we implemented smart connected systems to monitor, ...

Eric S. Coker, MS, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Global Health. Dr. Coker’s research interests are at the intersection of social determinants of health, population susceptibility, and environmental chemical exposures, and investigating how these factors combine to cause health effects and drive health disparities in maternal and child health.

Joshua Bernstein is a fifth year ECE undergraduate student who is working in UF’s ICSP lab under Dr. Swarup Bhunia and Dr. Soumyajit Mandal, as well as graduate student Naren Masna.

Under a DARPA project, a UF team led by ECE Assistant Professor Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian is developing novel integrated ferroelectric device technologies to address the urgent need for low-power information storage and high-speed wireless communication in the IoT era.

My T. Thai, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering and associate director of the Institute, is developing software technologies that can explain how bias can creep into artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

Three leading researchers at the Warren B. Nelms institute for the Connected World are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make the Internet of Things (IoT) more secure and more efficient.

Bo Pei is a doctoral student in the Educational Technology program in College of Education at the University of Florida and a new student member of the Warren B. Nelms institute. Bo is working with Prof. Wanli Xing.

Congratulations to My T. Thai, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering and an associate director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, who has been named a 2021 Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. Thai is recognized for her contributions ...

Dr Bernier who is a Pediatric Endocrinologist with research focus on the care and treatment of children with diabetes, obesity and comorbidities has recently joined the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World

UF-ECE PhD candidate and Nelms Institute student Keerthiraj Nagaraj was awarded an ‘Advanced Achievement’ digital badge for successful completion of all the exercises in the third “IBM Quantum Challenge”, a global competitive coding contest involving 2000 students, researchers, and industry professionals from all over the world.

This project focuses on addressing this crucial problem. The project will develop a flexible, powerful distributed platform for monitoring deployed networks, and analysis tools that use this data to certify safe and robust protocol operations in field. The project is funded by National Science Foundation

In a new paper published in Nature’s Microsystems and Nanoengineering, a team led by Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian and Dr. Swarup Bhunia has demonstrated a novel product-labeling approach based on resonant nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS). This technology substantially surpasses fundamental limitations of current labeling systems for product identification and authentication

Hosted by the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, the first annual Women in IoT Workshop, “Leading through Change,” took place virtually on Monday, Oct. 12 via the Zoom videoconferencing platform. With a keynote speaker, panel discussions, and student poster sessions, the densely packed workshop was more like a mini-conference. More than 200 registrants ...

Atul Prasad Deb Nath, a doctoral student at the Warren B. Nelms Institute, wins the Outstanding Achievement Award 2020 from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, University of Florida.

Dr. Sara Rampazzi has recently joined the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, and she will start as an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering on January 1st, 2021.

Kelsey Horace-Herron is a first year ECE Ph.D. student who is a member of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World under the supervision and mentorship of Professor Swarup Bhunia and fellow graduate student Naren Masna.

This project will develop a robust cyberinfrastructure (CI) system and service for construction research and applications to address the current challenges faced in the construction industry.

Professor Yier Jin, member and lead of the education program of the Warren B. Nelms Institute wins the prestigious 2020 IEEE CEDA Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award.

Members of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World have put smart connected systems into use to monitor, detect, and prevent the spread of infection – the ADAPT smart mask – aims to extend the functions of a traditional mask to render stronger protection.

Recent work by Professor William Eisenstadt, supported by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control, seeks to equip the traditional mosquito ‘bioassay’ cages with networked sensors.

The University of Florida today announced a public-private partnership with NVIDIA that will catapult UF’s research strength to address some of the world’s most formidable challenges, create unprecedented access to AI training and tools for underrepresented communities, and build momentum for transforming the future of the workforce.

Enigma Conference is known for facilitating engaging talks on emerging security & privacy threats & defenses at the growing intersection of tech & society. Dr. Oliveira is co-chairing this highly anticipated event among academic, industry and policy researchers for ENIGMA 2021 now calling for participation due on August 26, 2020.

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) represents a highly-prevalent complication of diabetes in which individuals suffer from damage to the blood vessels in the retina. Skylar’s paper focuses on using deep learning systems that offer the revolutionary potential to DR identification and prevention of vision loss.

Dr. Patanjali SLPSK is a postdoctoral research scholar working with the Nelms Institute for the Connected World, mentored by Director Dr. Swarup Bhunia. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where he was advised by Dr. Kamakoti.

New faculty member Dr. Xiaochen Xian recently received funding from the National Science Foundation in support of her research to develop adaptive sampling strategies for administering mass testing for COVID-19.

Dr. Shreya Saxena is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University and will start as an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department on October 1st, 2020.

Dr. Lili Du, Nelms Institute affiliate faculty and associate professor in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, recently received approval to set up and co-lead the Artificial Intelligence Task Committee under the Emerging Technologies Council of Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI) from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

In this new project in response to COVID-19, we use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication protocol to sense and measure the distance between two people wearing wristbands that help estimating exposure risks.

The University of Florida Research Foundation (UFRF) has named Prabhat Mishra, Ph.D., the Director of Research Programs of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, a UFRF Professor for 2020-2023.

Tamzidul Hoque, graduate student of Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) . He will be joining the EECS Department of the University of Kansas (KU) as an Assistant Professor, starting in Fall 2020.

A novel system proposed by Dr. Swarup Bhunia and researchers at the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World aims to remove the limiting factor by combining cloud computing, 5G connectivity, machine learning, and automotive automation systems to create what we call Peer-to-Peer Car Charging.

Engineering researchers in UF’s Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World are developing TRIDENT, a tri-modal sensory system for detecting onset of an infection such as COVID-19.

Professor My T. Thai, in collaboration with professors Hanghang Tong from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ross Maciejewski from Arizona State University, recently received a three year award for over $1 million from the National Science Foundation and Amazon to improve AI Fairness.

Sharon Lynn Chu, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE), has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Her project will investigate the design of wearable technologies to connect learning across formal and informal contexts, especially for elementary and middle school students.

Assistant Professor Tuba Yavuz has been awarded a 2020 NSF CAREER Award for her project, “Towards a Secure and Reliable Internet of Things through Automated Model Extraction and Analysis.” The project will additionally help broaden participation of women and other underrepresented groups in IoT security, formal methods, and software engineering research.

A paper co-authored by ECE Florida faculty and Ph.D. students has won First Best Paper Award at the 2019 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine (CEM) Awards. It was authored by ECE Florida faculty members Dr. Swarup Bhunia and Dr. Soumyajit Mandal, along with ECE Ph.D. students Shubhra Deb Paul and Naren Vikram Raj Masna.

The Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World at University of Florida stays is pleased to announce our inaugural Annual IoT Conference to be held on Dec 3-4,2019.The Nelms Institute stays at the forefront of research, education and outreach activities on core IoT technologies, including security, safety, machine intelligence, and interoperability.

ECE Assistant Professor Dr. Roozbeh Tabrizian is set to receive a 2019 DARPA Young Faculty Award for his proposal, “Ferroelectrically Transduced Ge Nano-Fin Bulk Acoustic Resonators for Chip-Scale Instinctually Adaptive RF Spectral Processing.” The prestigious $500K award will support Tabrizian’s efforts to protect cutting-edge civilian and military communication systems from jamming and interference using a ...

Xiaolong Guo and Dr. Yier Jin are co-authors on a paper that has been awarded 2019 Best Paper Award at the Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) Conference.

Swarup Bhunia, Ph.D., has been named as Director of the Institute and the Sachio Semmoto Professor. Dr. Bhunia is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Florida. My T. Thai, Ph.D., a UF Research Foundation Professor, has been selected as the Associate Director of the Institute.

The Nelms Institute hosted distinguished ECE Alumnus Dr. Sachio Semmoto, who has continued to support the institute with a generous gift of $1.5M.

Timed to coincide with Dr. Sachio Semmoto’s visit to UF, the Nelms Institute for the Connected World opened its doors on March 1, showing off a number of exciting and innovative IoT devices and projects.