Dr. Parisa Rashidi, associate professor & J. Crayton Pruitt Family Term Fellow, has been selected to receive the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering 2022 Faculty Award for Excellence in Leadership.
The Faculty Award for Excellence in Leadership recognizes and rewards a faculty member who has best demonstrated extraordinary leadership within their department, the HWCOE, the university, and/or the broader engineering profession, and best exemplifies leadership as defined by leadership attributes expected of our Gator Engineering students: visionary; inspiring; a skilled communicator; mission-focused, engaged and committed; caring and fair; thoughtful; collaborative; professional; having a positive attitude; and having sound perspective and strong intuition.
Research Leadership. Dr. Rashidi has demonstrated excellent leadership within the HWCOE and the university. She exemplifies leadership as a visionary and mission-focused researcher by actively engaging and coordinating the Medical AI efforts across campus. Last year she initiated the effort towards creating a new state-approved center on Intelligent Critical Care (IC3), as a joint initiative between UF College of Medicine and College of Engineering to promote novel AI applications in critical and acute care settings. The center leads and supports research, education, entrepreneurship, multi-site collaboration, and industry partnership and is strategically tied to research and educational mission to advance the UF AI initiative. Through the partnership between the Colleges of Medicine and Engineering, the IC3 Center is the first transdisciplinary program in the nation to study AI in critical and acute illnesses and will provide the necessary collaborative infrastructure to propel the University of Florida and UF Health as the leaders in this field. – Dr. Christine Schmidt
Educational Leadership. Dr. Rashidi has been instrumental in launching two new master’s degrees at UF. She is currently serving as the Chair of two new MS degrees (2022-2023); Master of Applied Data Science (MSADS) and Master of Artificial Intelligence Systems (MSAIS). The Dean also appointed her to serve as the Chair of the Data Analytics and Programming Task Force, tasked with revising the college-wide curriculum on data analytics and programming. The Task Force surveyed more than 60 related courses across the college and made several recommendations for improving the curriculum, including developing new college-wide courses and a new undergraduate certificate. Finally, in the BME department, she serves as the Chair of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Committee and represents the BME department at the college IDEA Committee besides serving as the student IDEA committee’s faculty advisor. – Dr. Christine Schmidt