2024-2025 Faculty Coaches

Ruogu Fang

Ph.D.– University of Florida

An AI researcher in medicine and healthcare, Dr. Ruogu Fang is a tenured Associate Professor and Pruitt Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research encompasses two principal themes: AI-empowered precision brain health and brain/bio-inspired AI.

Jorg Peters

Ph.D.– U Wisconsin

Dr. Peters’ research interests include modeling and computing with geometry: computer graphics, geometric design, numerical computations, surgery simulation.

Amr Abd-Elrahman

Ph.D.– University of Florida

His research area of interest is remote sensing and geospatial analysis applications in precision agriculture and natural resource management. Amr utilizes multi-spectral and hyperspectral images acquired from satellite, airborne, and small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) as well as lidar datasets. He uses machine learning algorithms, including deep learning networks (e.g., CNN, FCN, Deeplab) to analyze high spatial resolution sUAS images.

Christan Grant

Ph.D.– University of Florida

Dr. Christan Grant is an Arnold and Lisa Goldberg Rising Star Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Florida Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering. His research interests include: Database Management Systems, Interactive Machine Learning, Privacy, Visualization, Data Mining, Natural Language Processing.

Lawrence Ukeiley

Ph.D.– Clarkson University

Lawrence Ukeiley is currently a Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Florida. His primary research interests are in experimental fluid dynamics and turbulence as related to flow control, aeroacoustics, fluid structure interactions and the development of low order models. 

Philip Jackson

Ph.D.– University of Florida

Dr. Jackson’s research interests include numerical applications to heat transfer, fluid mechanics, magnetohydrodynamics, and facilitating undergraduate students to engage in similar projects. He is also interested in game-based learning systems and adaptive learning systems and their effect on student motivation.

Rong Zhang, Ph.D.

Rong Zhang

Ph.D.– Rutgers University

Dr. Zhang’s research areas include image and signal analysis and machine learning.

Erin Patrick

Ph.D.– University of Florida

Her research interests include: Biophysical modeling of electric-field effects on cells (non-excitable and excitable), semiconductor-device modeling and simulation, neural interfaces.

Cristian Cardenas

Ph.D.– University of Florida

Research interests: Industrial energy management and productivity, energy efficiency and optimization, energy policy, new energy sources and materials, chemical reactivity and structure optimization at molecular level.

Cheryl Resch

Ph.D.– University of Florida

Resch teaches core Computer Science courses and is performing computing education research. Before joining UF as a lecturer, Resch spent 29 years at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. There she performed research in secure computing and cybersecurity architecture.