Parisa Rashidi, Ph.D., professor and IC3 co-director in the University of Florida’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, receives the 2025–2026 Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Innovation.
The award honors faculty who demonstrate exceptional creativity, leadership and impact in advancing engineering research and technology. Rashidi was recognized for her pioneering contributions to artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and her ability to translate engineering innovation into real-world clinical impact.
A nationally recognized leader in medical AI, Rashidi’s work focuses on developing intelligent systems that improve patient care, particularly in critical and perioperative settings. Her research has introduced new approaches to real-time, multimodal patient monitoring and decision support, helping clinicians better assess risk and respond to changes in patient health.
Her work includes the development of I²CU, a multimodal sensing platform that integrates physiologic, environmental and behavioral data to enable autonomous monitoring of hospitalized patients, advancing patient safety and clinical decision-making.
Rashidi’s research program, supported by more than $47 million in funding from agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, bridges machine learning, sensing technologies and clinical informatics to address complex healthcare challenges.
Beyond research, Rashidi has played a central role in shaping AI education and interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Florida. As a leader in graduate education and co-founder of the Intelligent Clinical Care Center, she has helped build a collaborative ecosystem that connects engineers, clinicians and data scientists while preparing the next generation of innovators.
Her contributions have earned national recognition, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on early-career scientists and engineers.