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.

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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.

Director Dr. Mubarak Shah

“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.

“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

Dr. Mubarak Shah Delivers Public Talk and Masterclass at University of Western Australia

May 18, 2026

The University of Western Australia’s Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) Masterclasses provide an opportunity for advanced honors, postgraduate students and academic and professional researchers to meet and discuss their research with a distinguished visiting scholar. Masterclasses are designed to be cross-disciplinary, and registrants are welcome across all relevant disciplines and from all WA Universities. Participants…...

The University of Sydney Basser Seminar Talk by Prof Mubarak Shah

May 14, 2026

Dr. Mubarak Shah presented a talk titled “Dynamic Multi Agentic Systems” on May 14, 2026 as part of the Basser Seminar Series at the University of Sydney Abstract Agentic systems address the limitations of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) to solve complex tasks by coordinating multiple agents that iteratively reason, invoke tools, and exchange intermediate results.…...

IAI Researchers Have Thirteen Papers Accepted at CVPR 2026

May 4, 2026

Conference IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) June 3–7, 2026 Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado The IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) is the premier annual computer vision event comprising the main conference and several co-located workshops and short courses. This year’s conference will be…...

CRCV Ph.D. Graduate and Apple AI Leader Speaks at Go For Launch

March 5, 2026

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…...

Atomic Vision: UCF Researchers Create New AI Model for Molecular Analysis

February 13, 2026

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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Events

From Models to Systems: The Next Frontier of Generative AI

Dr. Jakub Tomczak Eindhoven University of Technology Tuesday, May 5, 2026 2:00PM – 3:00PM SPRK 229 (Formerly Global) | Zoom Abstract Generative AI is rapidly evolving from isolated models to integrated, system-level solutions. This seminar presents a unifying perspective that connects probabilistic foundations with modern deep generative approaches, including variational autoencoders, diffusion models, and attention-based…...

Past Events