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 leads the Computing for Social Great Lab, which patterns and evaluates computational technologies as they relate to human circumstances. In addition to his perform with Key III, he has produced program that makes use of synthetic intelligence to tackle the problems of range in admissions and hiring and developed an app that allows law enforcement officers to initiate a video call with the driver they have just pulled around.
Gilbert attended college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, 20 minutes from in which he grew up in Hamilton, Ohio. When he hadn’t prepared on turning into an educational, in 2000 he was the initial Black human being at the University of Cincinnati to acquire a Ph.D. in laptop or computer science. Ever since, Gilbert has worked to diversify the area and stimulate college students from underrepresented teams to pursue graduate degrees. Numerous of the graduate college students in his lab are from underrepresented teams, and Gilbert spends time accomplishing outreach at companies like UF’s chapter of the Nationwide Modern society of Black Engineers.
“I’ve constantly needed to assistance other individuals, and I saw science as empowering,” Gilbert stated.
Gilbert’s get the job done as a researcher, instructor, and mentor has not long gone unnoticed. He acquired the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Arithmetic, and Engineering Mentoring from President Barack Obama in 2011.
Gilbert is a Fellow of the Affiliation for Computing Equipment (ACM), American Affiliation of the Progression of Science (AAAS), the IEEE and the Countrywide Academy of Inventors (NAI). He also was acknowledged with the 2021 ACM Social Influence Award, the 2018 Personal computer Exploration Association’s A. Nico Habermann Award, and the AAAS 2014 Mentor Award. He was named a 2015-2106 AAAS-Lemelson Creation Ambassador, Speech Technological know-how Luminary by Speech Technology Journal and a nationwide purpose design by Minority Obtain Inc.
With the motto “Change the World” hanging in his lab, Gilbert and his college students and colleagues are accomplishing just that, especially in the discipline of voting technological know-how.
“In the long run, everybody is likely to use technology to vote, and it will undoubtedly be inspired by our do the job,” he claimed. “People have died in this place for the ideal to vote, and we’re fully commited to creating voting much more available for everybody.”
Go to right here to go through about all recipients of the Nationwide Medal of Technological know-how and Innovation and the National Medal of Science.

Oct 24, 2023
