Student Profiles

As an undergraduate at the University of Florida (UF), Mihael studied differential mathematical modeling for two summers at the University of Cambridge, UK under the supervision of Professor Christopher Gilligan, CBE. His research in Professor Gilligan’s group involved developing statistical models for coffee leaf rust and A. flavus spread in hopes of mitigating their harmful effects. In addition to his engineering coursework at UF, he volunteered in the Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory led by Professor Jose Principe. Under his supervision, Mihael incorporated focus of attention to better solve visual question answering tasks and developed a recurrent kernel machine for small-sample image classification. Mihael gained additional experience in machine learning while interning in Dr. Stephen Nuske’s group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) during his final summer. Mihael's research at CMU aimed to correlate image data of in-situ Sorghum bicolor plants to their respective genotype for the first time, allowing for rapid genotype prediction. Through all his research experiences, he contributed to 7 publications, 5 of which he is the first author, and received recognition from UF through the University Scholars Program and the U.S. government through the Barry Goldwater Scholarship. He also received recognition as UF’s Outstanding 4-year Scholar for his academic and extracurricular achievements.

Upon graduating, he intends to apply for a faculty position at an academic institution to teach and conduct research in the AI field. By combining both mathematics and biology, Mihael strives to use advanced computational techniques to better understand the transfer and encoding of information in the brain.