February 2020
Featured Article
Host University Spotlight: University of Florida
By: John G. Harris, Professor and Chair, Department of Electrical Computing, University of Florida
Greetings from Gainesville, Florida! We’re looking forward to seeing you all next month at the 2020 ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo in fantastic Orlando. Gainesville is two hours north of Orlando—please let us know if you want to stop by before or after the conference. We would be happy to show you around.
Founded in 1853, the University of Florida (UF) is a public land-grant research university. UF is the flagship university for the state of Florida and is the state’s only member of the Association of American Universities (AAU). UF ranks #7 among public institutions in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings. UF is a major driver of revenue and economic vitality in the state: according to a recent study, the university and related entities contributed $16.91 billion to the state’s economy in fiscal year 2017-2018. These activities contributed $10.4 billion, or 1.1%, to the Gross State Product of Florida and supported 134,609 full- and part-time jobs, which amounts to 1.1% of the workforce in the state.
The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at UF was established in 1909. We currently boast 54 tenured/tenure-track faculty, 1500 undergraduate students, and 500 graduate students. Our research expenditures for the 2018-19 fiscal year were upwards of $19M (ASEE definition). In the last ten years, we have doubled our research expenditures and increased our faculty numbers by 40%. Our graduate program is ranked #17 among public universities and #31 overall (USN&WR). But our story is about much more than numbers.
We put a tremendous amount of effort into our cross-cutting areas—multi-disciplinary institutes such as the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World and the NSF Center for Big Learning are centers at the vanguard of research in the areas of the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning. We are among the world leaders in cybersecurity research (Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research). The Interdisciplinary Microsystems Group focuses on micro- and nanosystems for healthcare, energy, and other industries. IMG is playing a leading role in the MIST Center (Multi-functional Integrated System Technology), an NSF I/UCRC program. All of these institutes and centers include researchers from other departments at UF as well as researchers at other universities.
I am looking forward to seeing you all next month in Orlando.