Appointment of new AI Task Force Co-Chairs

Joe Glover, Interim Provost

I am pleased to announce that Professors Kati Migliaccio and Jane Southworth will lead a new university task force to determine the future of AI at the University of Florida.

Dr. Migliaccio, Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, and Dr. Southworth, Chair of the Department of Geography, will lead the task force in its charge to consider how UF will shape the future of AI-driven education — and meet the fast-evolving AI needs and expectations of faculty, staff, students, and external partners.

I have asked Drs. Migliaccio and Southworth to dedicate six months to an AI blue-sky visioning process, concluding with a set of recommendations for how UF should evolve over the next five years. Because of the rapid advancement of AI, we will plan to reexamine these recommendations each year. This is particularly important as students and others arrive at UF accustomed to interacting with sophisticated, pervasive AI tools. 

The full task force membership of faculty, staff and students will be announced shortly. As members seek to address various AI tools, resources, and institutional structures, their efforts will benefit from ideas and input from everyone in our community. Please keep an eye out for periodic updates and calls to contribute, to be provided through the Faculty Senate and through internal communications.

UF is well ahead of other public and private universities in key dimensions of AI, including implementing AI across the curriculum and our early deployment and increasingly widespread use of the HiPerGator supercomputer.

Few things are more important to our students and stakeholders than building on this lead — and I look forward to working with the task force and wider university community to further define and shape the nation’s most powerful, and impactful, AI-driven university ecosystem.