President Joe Biden honored University of Florida personal computer science professor Dr. Juan Gilbert at the White Home today with the National Medal of Technological know-how and Innovation for groundbreaking a universal voting method that would make voting additional reliable and available for everyone and for expanding diversity in the laptop science workforce.
The Countrywide Medal of Engineering and Innovation, or NMTI, is the nation’s highest honor for technological accomplishment, bestowed by the president of the United States on top innovators for their superb contributions to America’s financial, environmental and social properly-getting.
As a personal computer scientist, educator and researcher, Gilbert, the Andrew Financial institutions Relatives Preeminence Endowed Professor and chair of UF’s Division of Laptop & Facts Science & Engineering, has dedicated much of his vocation to getting ways to increase election know-how, with the supreme purpose of preserving democracy.
To that end, he invented Primary III, an open up-supply voting procedure that accommodates men and women with actual physical disabilities as properly as makes sure the reliability and protection of just about every vote. Primary III was the 1st open-source voting technique to be applied in federal, state and local elections in the United States.
“The mission of the investigation enterprise at the University of Florida is to make a constructive big difference in the lives of men and women in the state, the nation, and the world, both equally in the current and in the upcoming,” mentioned UF President Ben Sasse. “Dr. Juan Gilbert is executing just that. We could not be a lot more pleased.”
The Nationwide Medal of Technology and Innovation recognizes people who have designed long lasting contributions to America’s competitiveness, common of residing, and high-quality of lifetime by means of technological innovation and to recognize individuals who have helped bolster the nation’s technological workforce.
“Dr. Gilbert’s recognition from the White House is a wonderful resource of pleasure for UF and our university, and a fitting honor,” claimed Forrest Masters, interim dean for UF’s Herbert Wertheim University of Engineering. “His inclusion into this cadre of eminent innovators speaks to the importance of his work in addressing some of our society’s most urgent challenges, and his motivation to the serious-environment technological alternatives that distinguish us as a single of the most inventive universities in the nation.”
Gilbert’s curiosity in voting safety grew just after the 2000 U.S. presidential election exposed flaws in the country’s voting engineering. As a freshly minted Ph.D. and professor, he went to work to come up with a alternative and designed engineering that can adapt to voters of diverse qualities.
“We were just striving to take care of a problem,” Gilbert explained. “If you cannot vote, how is that various from not possessing the appropriate to vote? What is gratifying is shifting the historical past of voting.”
As a result of his experience in advancing computer system software program and engineering, Gilbert focuses on the issue where engineering intersects with persons and improves the consequence of that conversation. At UF, he