The University of Florida AI and Informatics Research Institute held the first AI Research Awards during AI Days to honor researchers across disciplines.

Dr. Kiley Graim is recognized for advancing precision medicine through AI applied to cancer biology and genetics, leading a large comparative oncology initiative that analyzes nearly 200,000 tumors across 240 species to identify shared mechanisms for better patient outcomes.

Alina Zare, director of the AI and Informatics Research Institute, announced the awards and described the selection as highly competitive, employing a two-stage process with internal rubric-based scoring and an external committee.

Three honorees were recognized: Dr. Adrian Roitberg for accelerating molecular discovery with neural-network ANI models demonstrated on UF’s HiPerGator AI supercomputer to model early-Earth atmosphere chemistry.

Dr. Jeremy Balch was honored for developing AI tools to enhance surgical safety and efficiency, using natural-language processing, computer vision, and data modeling to automate trauma coding and instrument tracking within surgical workflows.

The event reflects UF’s cross-disciplinary AI research, shaped by collaboration with sponsors including NVIDIA, Mark III Systems, Vobile, Cisco and Vast Data.