The third annual State of Science continued our tradition of celebrating the local scientists, doctors, technologists and innovators. Like many events in 2020 it was virtual. It was kicked off by world-renowned artist Janet Echleman who recently installed her work at the St. Petersburg Pier.
Following Ms. Echleman were five lightning round presentations from innovators at USF's College of Marine Science and College of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, and Poynter Institute.
Link to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ-nYchnq50
The graduation of the CodeBoxx AI Literacy and Applications Bootcamp was held on Saturday, August 9th at the ARK Innovation Center. The celebration included a tour of the ARK building, a sneak peek at the Vu Studio, and a hackathon. This bootcamp is designed to give participants a competitive edge in the job market by teaching practical ways to use AI. AI literacy and tech communication are more important than ever, and we're incredibly proud of this graduating class for taking that step forward.
The Tampa Bay Estuary Program works to build public and private partnerships to restore and protect Tampa Bay. Critical to this effort is the use of environmental indicators to describe status and trends of bay health. Dr. Marcus Beck will describe his work synthesizing multiple data streams with reproducible workflows to develop and report on bay health indicators.
A joint venture by Tampa Bay Wave and USF, the 2025 cohort of the nationally recognized FinTech|X Accelerator kicked off on August 4th, supporting high-growth fintech startups through an intensive 8-week program. This year’s class includes St. Petersburg-based innovators HappiNest.AI and Congruit Inc. The program leverages USF’s world-class faculty, research, and business networks to help founders scale impactful technologies.