UF Planning Invention Awards

From the University of Florida, one of my schools:

Srinivasan and Nawari Awarded 2022 Invention of the Year Award by UF Innovate

More than 200 innovators and entrepreneurs gathered for UF Innovate | Tech Licensing’s fifth annual Standing InnOvation event to honor and celebrate innovators and their work at the University of Florida in fiscal year 2022.

Since its inception in 2018, Standing InnOvation gives a much-deserved “standing ovation” to the UF innovators who disclosed, licensed or optioned technologies in the fiscal year that ended June 30. This year, innovators disclosed 310 technologies, licensed 124 and started 10 companies.

Out of those 310 new technologies disclosed in FY22, each of UF’s six licensing teams chose one Invention of the Year that stood out to them as one with great potential.

One of those Inventions of the Year was Virtual Building Construction Inspection for Permitting by Ravi Srinivasan, director of Graduate Programs and Research in the M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management, and Nawari Nawari, Professor in the School of Architecture and the college’s Diversity Officer.

The College of Design, Construction and Planning faculty members teamed up to develop AI-based software for automated zoning review, building plan review and virtual building inspection. It performs rapid, uniform, comprehensive and consistent code reviews, often missed by human plan reviewers.

The AI-based plan review is increasing the accuracy of code compliance, reducing errors and creating a more efficient process. One of the nation’s top homebuilders is using the invention for plan reviews in Florida.  

Srinivasan and Nawari are the first members of our college to receive the Invention of the Year Award from UF Innovate in the four years of its existence. ....  '

Researchers Use Lasers to Trick Autonomous Cars

Possible issue with lasers?

ACM TECHNEWS

Researchers Use Lasers to Trick Autonomous Cars

By Interesting Engineering

November 2, 2022

Researchers at the University of Florida, the University of Michigan, and Japan's University of Electro-Communications used a laser to trick autonomous vehicles' LiDAR systems to remove obstacles and pedestrians from view.

The laser mimicked LiDAR reflections received by the sensor, which made it view genuine reflections from real obstacles as nonexistent.

In test conditions of a laser attack using basic camera tracking software within 15 feet of the autonomous vehicle, the car failed to slow down near a pedestrian. The researchers said more advanced equipment could enable an attack to be executed from greater distances from the vehicle.

From Interesting Engineering

View Full Article     

HVIDIA Funds UF For AI

As mentioned formerly, now with a impressive building.  A report from a former school of mine. Now with an impressive building: Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology.  Funded by NVIDIA with future plans for a hub there. 

A name that has put UF on the AI map! 

With AI taking center stage in the curriculum across all colleges, it is only fitting that AI take center stage on campus as well. 

AI and other technologies will have a home in the heart of campus starting in 2023 when Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology opens. The 263,000-square-foot building, anchored by a gift from Chris Malachowsky (BS ’80) and his company, NVIDIA, will create a hub for advances in computing, communications and cyber-technologies with the potential for profound societal impact. 

The building provides space for researchers and students in medicine, engineering, pharmacy, informatics and others to collaborate across disciplines. In making the gift, Malachowsky noted the possibility for AI and data sciences to be “life-changing” for students and scientists.

#GoGreater #GoGators #NamedSpaces #AIatUF

Baking Security into Chips

 A former Alma Mater of mine is putting a security brain into Chips: 

THE ART OF THE DESIGN: UF COMPUTER ENGINEERS’ BAKED-IN ‘SECURITY BRAIN’ TECHNOLOGY HAS MICROCHIPS DEFENDING THEMSELVES

In Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Featured, News, Research & InnovationMarch 10, 2022  from the U of F

SANDIP RAY, PH.D., IOT TERM PROFESSOR, AND SWARUP BHUNIA, PH.D., SEMMOTO ENDOWED PROFESSOR OF IOT, BOTH FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING, WITH PATCHABLE HARDWARE SETUP

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 proliferation of all things ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) — the realm of smart or automated objects and devices that are interconnected or exchange data via the Internet — a necessary, cost-effective microchip security solution has followed. The answer posed by Dr. Bhunia, Ph.D., director of Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World and Semmoto Endowed Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and Dr. Ray, Ph.D., Endowed IoT Term Professor in ECE, seemed an impossibility, or at least a misnomer: ‘patchable hardware.’ But the breakthrough may actually be what the industry was waiting for.

“Hardware, microchips, are not patchable,” Dr. Bhunia said. “Once they’re designed, you can’t fix their security problems.” He and Dr. Ray observed that industrial chip security protocol was ad hoc and reactive — finding a problem, then fixing it in the next iteration, with no protection against potential unknown attacks. In time, industry experts realized that was an expensive proposition. “Any time you get a security attack, what do you do? There is no other recourse but a product recall, which will cost billions of dollars. Industry has done it that way forever.”

But the two conceived a novel approach six years prior, when Dr. Ray was with the Intel Corporation. The initial thrust of their research, which found its inspiration by mimicking the self-regulating function of the human brain, recently found its way into a research program for the Department of Defense (DoD), called Automatic Implementation of Secure Silicon (AISS). With $2.4 million in funding from industry research partner and prime contractor Northrop Grumman, the UF co-investigators successfully capped their four-year chip design research work with a revolutionized microchip security, making it part of the intuitive, patchable hardware.

THE PATCHABLE HARDWARE SETUP IN DETAIL

“This is a paradigm change, not in fabrication or in the production process, but the design architecture; the chip itself handles all the security aspects,” Dr. Bhunia said. “Our investigation in the DARPA/DoD grant has two related, critical aspects. First, it explores the concept of ‘security brain’ — a plug-and-play module that can be inserted into modern microchips to account for all their security needs. It acts as a central agent responsible for track-and-trace-control of all security-critical activities. Second, this security brain is patchable, meaning it can be upgraded when needed to meet evolving security requirements.”  .... ' 

NVIDIA and U of Florida

An Alma of mine makes an interesting AI move with NVidia.

UF announces $70 million artificial intelligence partnership with NVIDIA  
Artist's rendering of University of Florida's new AI supercomputer based on NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD architecture. 

“With AI holding the potential to revolutionize education and research – and indeed every sector of society – the University of Florida will work to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the center of this transformational change. We’re thrilled UF is demonstrating such national leadership and placing community engagement and training a 21st Century workforce at the heart of its mission.”

Peter McPherson, President, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities
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.

The initiative is anchored by a $50 million gift -- $25 million from UF alumnus Chris Malachowsky and $25 million in hardware, software, training and services from NVIDIA, the Silicon Valley-based technology company he cofounded and a world leader in AI and accelerated computing.

Along with an additional $20 million investment from UF, the initiative will create an AI-centric data center that houses the world’s fastest AI supercomputer in higher education. Working closely with NVIDIA, UF will boost the capabilities of its existing supercomputer, HiPerGator, with the recently announced NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD™ architecture. This will give faculty and students within and beyond UF the tools to apply AI across a multitude of areas to improve lives, bolster industry, and create economic growth across the state.

“This incredible gift from Chris and NVIDIA will propel the state of Florida to new heights as it strives to be an economic powerhouse, an unrivaled leader in job creation and an international model of 21st-century know-how,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “Over the coming years, tens of thousands of University of Florida graduates with this unique AI-oriented background will create their futures and ours, transforming our workforce and virtually every field and every industry here in Florida and around the world.”  ..   ... '