Dr. Damon Woodard has accepted a position as Director of AI Partnerships for the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. In this role, Dr. Woodard will facilitate partnerships with other universities, companies and non-profits with the goal of enhancing the college’s research and education in the field of AI. These connections are of critical importance as the university builds on its public-private partnership with NVIDIA creating the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer in academia.

Dr. Woodard received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2005, the first African American to do so in the university’s history. He is currently an Associate Professor within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Florida. He is also a member of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS) Research.

Before becoming a faculty member, Dr. Woodard was a Director of Central Intelligence postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Woodard’s current research involves the application of artificial intelligence (computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, etc.) to various problems in the national security and cybersecurity domains.