Matheus Kunzler Maldaner
M.S. Student (AI Systems + HCI)
I am a first-year master's student at the University of Florida in the M.S. AI Systems Program. I am passionate about Neurosymbolic AI and Human-Computer Interaction. My research spans Differentiable Logic Gate Networks at the Florida Institute for National Security, Auditing Text-to-Image Model Outputs at Carnegie Mellon University and Designing Longer Running Agentic Systems with the Microsoft Research AI Frontiers group.
Education
Aug. 2025 — Present
Aug. 2021 — May. 2025
B.S. in Data Science
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
GPA: 3.9/4.0, Summa Cum Laude
UF Hall of Fame
UF Outstanding Scholars and Leaders Award
Aug. 2017 — May. 2021
Industry Research Experience
Summer 2025
Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA
Research Intern, AI Frontier Group
Worked on enabling Agentic Systems to perform longer running tasks, and on the development on SentinelBench.
Academic Research Experience
Summer 2024 — Present
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Research Intern, Human Computer Interaction Institute
Developing tools to audit text-to-image models.
Fall 2023 — Present
Florida Institute for National Security (FINS), Gainesville, FL
Research Assistant, Neurosymbolic AI
Mentor:
Dr. Damon Woodard,
Dr. Domenic Forte,
,
Working on the application and optimization of Differentiable Logic Gate Networks.
Leadership Experience
Fall 2023 — Present
Data Science and Informatics (DSI) Organization, Gainesville, FL
President
Overseeing an executive board of 30 students. Won the UF Student Organization of the Year Award.
Fall 2024 — Present
IEEE Signal Processing Society at UF, Gainesville, FL
Co-Founder & Vice-President
Co-founded the UF chapter of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
Fall 2024 — Present
UF AI Club, Gainesville, FL
Director of Research
Leading the research initiatives for the UF AI Club.
Fall 2023 — Spring 2024
UF American Statistical Association (ASA) Chapter, Gainesville, FL
Vice President
Created a mentorship program to pair 60 students to mentors.
2018 — 2021
Marjory's Garden, Parkland, FL
President
Led Marjory's Garden organization during high school achieving 1000+ volunteering hours.
2020 — 2021
National Honor Society, Parkland, FL
President
Served as President of the National Honor Society chapter and delivered the Pledge of Allegiance.
2020 — 2021
Mu Alpha Theta Calculus Team, Parkland, FL
Captain
Led the Mu Alpha Theta Calculus competition team and hosted practice sessions.
Honors and Awards
2025
UF HiPerGator Early Career Award
As the only Master's student recipient for my work on optimizing Differentiable Logic Gate Networks.
2025
UF Gator Create 3 of 7 Tracks
Winning the music, nature and static image tracks in UF's annual creative competition.
2025
UF Gator Hack 1st Place
For creating a human-centered agentic system for analyzing and validating research papers.
2025
Heidelberg Laureate Forum
1 of 200 young researchers selected to attend the annual Heidelberg Laureate Forum with Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists.
2025
Microsoft Intern Puzzle Day Fastest Solver
For being the first to solve every warmup puzzle leading up to Microsoft's annual Intern Puzzle Day competition.
2025
ITNG Best Student Paper Award
For my work with Stephen Wormald on ExpLogic, focusing on the explainability of Differentiable Logic Gate Networks
2025
ITIAS Hack Space Con Scholarship
Received scholarship to attend Hack Space Con and tour the Kennedy Space Center.
2025
FGLSA Travel Support
To present my work on Differentiable Logic Gate Networks at ITNG 2025.
2025
UF CLAS Excellence Award Finalist
1 of 12 finalists for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Excellence Award.
2025
UF Outstanding Leader Award
Recognized as 1 of 7 graduating seniors for outstanding leadership.
2025
UF Student Organization of the Year
Awarded to the Data Science and Informatics (DSI) Student Organization during my time as President among 1000+ UF Organizations
2025
UF Career Influencer Award
Awarded to the Data Science and Informatics (DSI) Student Organization during my time as President for outstanding career development initiatives.
2025
UF REPU Scholar
Research Excellence Program for Undergraduates recognizing my research contributions in AI.
2025
UF Hall of Fame
1 of 25 students inducted into the University of Florida Hall of Fame for outstanding academic and leadership achievements.
2025
Summa Cum Laude Honors Thesis
Completed honors thesis with distinction, unanimously approved with no revisions.
2025
UF Outstanding Leader Award
1 of 7 graduating seniors for my leadership as President of the Data Science and Informatics Student Organization.
2025
UF Swamphacks X Best AI Hack
For building a differentiable logic gate visualizer for better explainability.
2025
ASA DataFest Best Visualization
A weekend-long data analysis competition for students of any major.
2024
ShellHacks Most Popular
Florida's largest hackathon, a 36-hour event with 1500+ students.
2024
FGLSAMP Scholar
A program that provides financial support and research opportunities to underrepresented minority students in STEM.
2024
USCLAP 2nd Place Overall
An international competition for undergraduate students to showcase their data analysis projects.
2024
NSF Travel Award
Awarded travel funding to present first-author demo paper at HCOMP 2024.
2024
Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar
Selected as a scholar for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
2024
UF Joe Glover Data Science Scholarship
Awarded to 1 Data Science major student ever year for demonstrating excellence.
2024
UF AI Scholar
Offers undergraduate students a stipend of $1750 and the opportunity to collaborate in AI research.
2024
UF University Scholar
Recognized as a University Scholar for academic excellence, a superset of the UF AI Scholar program.
2024
Apple Pathways Alliance Fellow
Selected for Apple's inaugural program to help students interested in pursuing higher education.
2024
UF ASA DataFest 1st Place Overall
A weekend-long data analysis competition where teams work to share insights from real-world data.
2024
UF OSC MiniHack 2nd Place Overall and Best AI Hack
For developing a Discord bot that leverages sentiment analysis to keep track of server trends.
2024
UF William G. Cross Award Finalist
As 1 of 3 students recognized for excellence in scholarship, leadership, and service to the University of Florida.
2024
FURC Travel Award
To present my first poster on Neurosymbolic AI at the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference.
2024
UF Gator Create 2nd Place Overall
Alongside my friend Brandon Wand for our work using Flux and Photoshop to create images.
2024
UF Gator Hack III Most Popular Award
For training and deploying Differentiable Logic Gate Networks onto FPGAs for low-latency inference.
2023
UF Gator Hack II Finalist
For developing AdapTree, an AI-powered educational tool that tailors learning based on a person's existing knowledge.
2021 — 2025
Dean's Honor List
For achieving a semester GPA of 3.75 or higher on all semesters during my undergraduate degree
2021 — 2025
Bright Futures Program Scholar
Merit-based scholarship program that covers up to four years of full tuition for Florida residents.
Publications
6
Microsoft Research AI Frontiers (arXiv preprint). 2025.
C5
ACM CI. 2025.
C4
ITNG. 2025.
C3
HCOMP. 2024.
J2
Springer AI. 2024.
1
Undergraduate Thesis, University of Florida. 2025.
Selected Projects [Full list]Full list at matheus.wiki
2025
MIRAGE
· Research
· CI'25 & HCOMP'24
Multi-model Interface for Reviewing & Auditing Generative Text-to-Image AI — a platform enabling side-by-side comparison of T2I models to study how comparative auditing changes bias detection strategies.
2025
Plato's Cave
· UF Gator Hack IV
· 1st Place Overall
AI-powered research verification tool that decomposes academic papers into factual claims and verifies them using a legion of AI agents, generating visual knowledge graphs with mathematically-grounded integrity scores.
2025
Magentic-UI
· Work
· 9.3k+ GitHub Stars
Human-in-the-loop agentic system for web automation that enables users to co-plan, co-task, and maintain control over AI agents through action guards and transparent execution.
Press
OCt 2025
"Matheus Kunzler Maldaner Wins HiPerGator Early Career Award," University of Florida AI² Center
Oct 2025
"UF's Maldaner mixes and mingles with global AI experts," UF Department of Engineering Education
Oct 2025
"FINS Team Wins 1st Place @ UF AI Days," Florida Institute for National Security
Jun 2025
"UF AI Scholar Matheus Kunzler Maldaner," University of Florida AI² Center
May 2025
"Matheus Kunzler Maldaner Biography," UF Center for Undergraduate Research
Jun 2025
"Knowledge Should Be Accessible To All," UF Research Computing
Mar 2025
"Parkland's Matheus Kunzler Maldaner Named to UF Hall of Fame," Parkland Talk
Apr 2025
"DSI Wins Org of the Year," UF Artificial Intelligence and Informatics Research Institute
Mar 2025
"Matheus Maldaner inducted in the UF Hall of Fame," UF Artificial Intelligence and Informatics Research Institute
Sep 2024
"What has UF been doing with AI so far?," The Independent Florida Alligator
Apr 2025
"Third annual DataFest brings together students from across UF," UF Public Health & Health Professions
Nov 2024
"HCOMP 2024 - HCII coverage," CMU Human Computer Interaction Institute
Apr 2024
"A whirlwind of big data - DataFest 2024 recap," UF Public Health & Health Professions
Mentoring
2024 — Present
UF Undergraduate Student, Information Systems and Operations Management
I met Maryam through the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) mentorship program back when she was still a DS major...
2025 — Present
UF Undergraduate Student, Data Science
I met Jaime during my time as President of the Data Science and Informatics club, where Jaime serves as the technology coordinator!
2025 — Present
UF Undergraduate Student, Computer Science
I met Ethan during the 2025 OSC MiniHack where he and his team won 2nd place while I studied nearby and gave unprompted advice.
2025 — Present
UF Undergraduate Student, Biomedical Engineering
I met Luana 19 years ago when my parents decided they wanted another child, and we have stayed close.
2025 — Present
Georgia Tech Undergraduate Student, Computer Science
I met Aamogh in a Discord server while he was planning to transfer to UF from UCF. He ended up going to Georgia Tech (boo!).
2025 — Present
UF Undergraduate Student, Computer Science and Anthropology
I met Raúl through LinkedIn discussing the CMU REU. He is super kind and even gave me a laptop extension to help my posture (much needed).
Service
Organizer
Data Science and Informatics Symposium
(DSI Symposium) at University of Florida
2025
UF AI2 Summit
(AI2 Summit) at University of Florida
2025
Program Committee
Reviewer
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(CHI) at ACM SIGCHI
2025
SEA Workshop @ NeurIPS
(SEA) at NeurIPS
2025
AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
(AIES-25) at AAAI & ACM
2025
Institutional
IEEE EMBS at UF — Cancer/Mental Health Awareness Design-a-thon (Judge), October 2025
Member
2025 — Present
Association for Computer Machinery (ACM)
2024 — Present
IEEE Signal Processing Society (IEEE SPS)
2024 — Present
Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
2024 — Present
ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI)
2024 — Present
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
2024 — Present
National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE)
2023 — Present
Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)
2023 — 2024
American Statistical Association (ASA)
References
Dr. Damon L. Woodard, Professor; Director, Florida Institute for National Security
Florida Institute for National Security (FINS), ECE
University of Florida
Dr. Jason I. Hong, Professor Emeritus
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Hussein Mozannar, Senior Researcher
AI Frontiers
Microsoft Research
Dr. Cátia Silva, Instructional Associate Professor
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Florida
Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, Associate Instructional Professor
Department of Statistics
University of Florida