UF Provost Joe Glover on Building a Leading AI University

When NVIDIA co-founder Chris Malachowsky approached University of Florida Provost Joe Glover with the offer of an AI supercomputer, he couldn’t have predicted the transformative impact it would have on the university. In just a short time, UF has become one of the top public colleges in the U.S. and developed a groundbreaking neural network for healthcare research.

In a recent episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz sat down with Glover, who is also senior vice president of academic affairs at UF. The two discussed the university’s efforts to put AI to work across all aspects of higher education, including a public-private partnership with NVIDIA that has helped transform UF into one of the leading AI universities in the country.

Just a year after the partnership was unveiled in July 2020, UF rose to No. 5 on the U.S. News and World Report’s list of the best public colleges in the U.S. The ranking was, in part, a recognition of UF’s vision for infusing AI into its teaching and research.

Last March, UF Health, the university’s academic health center, teamed with NVIDIA to develop GatorTron, a neural network that generates synthetic clinical data researchers can use to train other AI models in healthcare.

According to Glover, the success of UF’s AI initiatives can be attributed to “a combination of generous philanthropy, some good decisions, a little inspiration and a few miracles here and there along the way.” 

He believes that the university’s AI-powered vision has significantly impacted its teaching and research and will continue to do so in the future.

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