Dear friends, faculty, alumni and students,
With the spring semester rapidly coming to a close, now is a great time to take stock of our remarkable work in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering.
We continue to delve into some of the world’s thorniest problems while achieving student and faculty success with groundbreaking, timely research that will help this world navigate a safer digital future.
Here, you will read about the most impactful CISE news of this semester.
A multi-institutional team with CISE faculty and students, for example, wrote a paper that systematically examined 20 popular websites that use artificial intelligence to generate nude or sexualized images. These online platforms create non-consensual images from a single photo in under 30 seconds for only a few cents, usually targeting women. Through a thorough understanding of these platforms, researchers hope to empower data-informed conversations between the scientific communities and policymakers on ways to better protect rights and minimize harm.
Also in this issue, UF’s Sara Rampazzi, Ph.D., and her research group have revealed that thermal-based perception systems in cameras may be far less reliable and secure than previously assumed, especially for safety‑critical tasks like obstacle avoidance in autonomous robots and aerial drones. The group has developed fascinating, real-time defenses to detect and filter misleading thermal signals.
We also want to share work being done by Sumit Jha, Ph.D., focused on strengthening the security measures built into AI tools to ensure they are safe for all to use. His group is breaking AI on purpose, examining “decision pathways” rather than relying only on clever manipulations of user prompts.
We also share the work of Neha Rani, Ph.D., who is exploring students’ patterns of AI reliance. Ultimately, she and her team want to help students use AI tools more effectively, so they are identifying predictors for appropriate reliance, over-reliance and under-reliance behaviors.
We celebrate CISE Professor Emeritus Sumi Helal, Ph.D., who is among three UF professors in the 2025 class of National Academy of Inventors Fellows.
In student news, we are also proud to feature CISE doctoral student Abhishek Kulkarni, who earned third place in UF’s 2025 Three Minute Thesis competition, becoming the only finalist and winner representing the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. Kulkarni is a Ph.D. candidate in human-centered computing
In Alumni news, CISE is proud to announce the 2025 class of Distinguished Alumni Awardees. The alumni in the 2025 class have made significant contributions to their fields of expertise, demonstrated outstanding personal accomplishments or exhibited exceptional service to the department and the college.
We also feature accomplished CISE alumna Farimah Farahmandi, Ph.D. She’s the author of eight books, has won the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC) Under-40 Innovator Award, the Pramod Khargonekar Excellence Award, a UF Excellence for Assistant Professors Award, ECE’s Excellence in Research Award, Semiconductor Research Corp Young Faculty Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award — all before she was 40. Now she’s won UF’s 40 Under 40 alumni award.
No surprise, she’s also in the 2025 class of Distinguished Young Alumni Awardees.
We are so thrilled to share these stories and more. It has been a busy and productive semester, and I look forward to a restful and rejuvenating summer.
Go Gators!
Patrick Traynor, Ph.D.
John and Mary Lou Dasburg Preeminent Chair in Engineering
Professor
Interim Chair
Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering