Our Mission
A bold, university-wide initiative, the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI) unites renowned faculty who advance AI across disciplines and colleges — enhancing students’ experiences while driving discovery that positively impacts industry, the economy and society.
UCF continues to fuel strong momentum in AI — from machine learning to mathematics, computer vision to healthcare and more. This future-focused institute propels us to the forefront of AI research and education, solidifying our place among the most innovative universities in the nation.
Explore the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at UCF.
Pioneering AI Technology:
Trustee Chair of Computer Science Mubarak Shah is the Director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence. He established the esteemed — currently ranked No. 11 nationally (CSRankings) — computer vision program at UCF, where he’s been a professor for almost 40 years. Shah is known for groundbreaking work in computer vision, including the UCF‑101 human action recognition dataset.
Impact and Momentum:
Under Shah’s leadership, the institute is poised to lead AI’s transformation of innovation and workforce development — leveraging UCF’s strengths and scaling a unified AI enterprise, nationally and globally.
“The Institute of Artificial Intelligence unites UCF’s AI strengths under one roof, creating a platform for high-impact research and talent development. By bringing together leading faculty, motivated students and forward-thinking industry partners, the institute will unlock new possibilities across disciplines.”
— Mubarak Shah, Director of the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Trustee Chair of Computer Science
Supporting Strong Faculty Collaboration
More than two dozen esteemed UCF researchers make up the institute, representing four of the university’s colleges and a variety of future-focused fields. Based in the same building for maximum collaboration, these faculty members lead high-impact research and elevate AI educational offerings across the university.
Cuneyt Akcora
Laura Brattain
Chen Chen
Xinyu Chen
Niels da Vitoria Lobo
Aritra Dutta
Shahana Ibrahim
Shubhra Kanti Karmaker
Pegah Khosravi
Christian Kümmerle
Ser-Nam Lim
Wu Lin
Jialin Liu
Yogesh Rawat
Mubarak Shah
Yuzhang Shang
Ali Siahkoohi
Amrit Singh Bedi
Shashank Sonkar
Yu Tian
Shruti Vyas
Yue Wang
Song Wang
Zhenyi Wang
“AI is massively transforming how we live, work and learn. As Florida’s Premier Engineering and Technology University, UCF is uniquely positioned to lead in this critical space. This initiative reflects our broader commitment to grow research, scale our areas of excellence and prepare students to lead in a technology-driven future.”
— Alexander N. Cartwright, UCF President
News
CRCV Ph.D. Graduate and Apple AI Leader Speaks at Go For Launch
CRCV Ph.D. Graduate and Apple AI Leader Afshin Dehghan Speaks at Go For Launch March, 5, 2026 On February 21st, UCF announced the public launch of Go For Launch: The Campaign for UCF’s Next Mission, a $3.5 billion campaign for accelerating UCF’s leadership in AI, space research, and next-generation technologies. The University was pleased to…...
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Atomic Vision: UCF Researchers Create New AI Model for Molecular Analysis
Professor Shruti Vyas’ new AI model could accelerate research by enabling researchers to see the shape of molecules, which could improve drug discovery and development. By Andrew Miller | February 13, 2026 Original Article At the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI), researchers have developed MolVision, a new artificial intelligence (AI) vision language (VLM) model capable of accurately…...
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IAI Researchers Have 23 Papers Accepted in ICLR 2026
The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) is the premier gathering of professionals dedicated to the advancement of the branch of artificial intelligence called representation learning, but generally referred to as deep learning. UCF IAI Faculty and their collaborators had 23 papers accepted into the (ICLR 2026) conference that will take place in Rio de…...
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Orlando Science Center’s Spark STEM Fest
February 10, 2026 IAI Faculty Dr. Yogesh Rawat, Dr. Shruti Vyas, and IAI graduate students will be presenting at the Spark STEM Fest presented by UCF Office of Research at the Orlando Science Center from February 14-16, 2026. Exhibition Title: “AI in Action: From Real-Time Perception to Scientific Discovery” Location: Level 4 – Dino Digs…...
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UCF India Center Names Dr. Amrit Singh Bedi Faculty of the Year
February 9, 2026 The UCF India Center has announced the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Faculty member Dr. Amrit Singh Bedi as the recipient of its inaugural Faculty of the Year Award, recognizing exceptional leadership, service, and contributions to the Center’s mission of advancing ideas, education, and research on contemporary India. Selected through a highly competitive…...
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Events
Towards Structured Physical AI Models
Dr. Roei Herzig MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Tuesday, April 14, 2026 2:00PM – 3:00PM SPRK 229 (Formerly Global) | Zoom Abstract Current AI systems can synthesize videos, pass the bar exam, and write code. Despite these advances, robots still struggle with basic physical tasks, like folding a shirt, that humans perform naturally. This disparity stems…...
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Topological Descriptors in Graph Representation Learning: From Persistent Homology to Scalable Embeddings
Dr. Astrit Tola Florida State University Tuesday, March 3, 2026 1:00PM – 2:00PM SPRK 229 (Formerly Global) | Zoom Abstract The intersection of algebraic topology and machine learning has opened new avenues for understanding the multi-scale structural properties of complex data. While Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) excel at capturing local neighborhood information, they often fail…...
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