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

M.S. in AI Systems

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

UF Early Career HiPerGator Award

Aug. 2021 - May. 2025

B.S. in Data Science

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Thesis: Applications of Differentiable Logic Gate Networks

GPA: 3.9/4.0, Summa Cum Laude

UF Hall of Fame UF Outstanding Scholars and Leaders Award

Aug. 2017 - May. 2021

High-School Diploma

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, FL

GPA: 4.0/4.0

Industry Research Experience

Summer 2025

Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA

Research Intern, AI Frontier Group

Mentor: Dr. Hussein Mozannar, Dr. Gagan Bansal, Dr. Adam Fourney

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

Mentor: Dr. Jason Hong, Dr. Motahhare Eslami, Dr. Kenneth Holstein, Wesley Deng

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, Dr. Olivia Dizon-Paradis, Stephen Wormald

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

2025

UF Gator Create 3 of 7 Tracks

2025

UF Gator Hack 1st Place

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

2025

ITNG Best Student Paper Award

2025

ITIAS Hack Space Con Scholarship

Received scholarship to attend Hack Space Con and tour Kennedy Space Center.

2025

FGLSA Travel Support

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 as President of Data Science and Informatics (DSI).

2025

UF Career Influencer Award

2025

REPU Scholar

2025

UF Hall of Fame

Recognized as 1 of 25 students with the highest honor given to students at the University of Florida.

2025

Summa Cum Laude Honors Thesis

Completed honors thesis with distinction, unanimously approved with no revisions.

2025

UF Outstanding Scholars and Leaders Award

Recognized as 1 of 7 graduating seniors for leadership and scholarship.

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

UF Gator Create 2nd Place

2024

UF Gator Hack Most Popular

2024

ShellHacks Most Popular

Florida's largest hackathon, a 36-hour event where students build new technology projects and compete for prizes.

2024

FGLSAMP Scholar

2024

USCLAP 2nd Place Overall

An international competition for undergraduate students to showcase their data analysis projects from their statistics courses.

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

2024

UF AI Scholar

Offers undergraduate students a stipend of $1750 and the opportunity to collaborate in AI research.

2024

UF University Scholar

2024

Apple Pathways Alliance Fellow

2024

ASA DataFest 1st Place

A weekend-long data analysis competition where teams work to share insights from real-world data.

2024

OSC Hackathon Best AI Hack & 2nd Place

For developing a Discord bot that leverages sentiment analysis to keep track of server trends.

2024

William G. Cross Award Finalist

For excellence in scholarship, leadership, and service to the University of Florida.

2024

FURC Travel Award

To present a Neurosymbolic AI poster at the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference.

2024

UF GenAI Arts Competition 2nd Place Overall

A competition that celebrates the creative use of generative AI in various artistic domains.

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.

2021-2025

Bright Futures Program Scholar

Merit-based scholarship program that covers up to four years of full tuition for Florida residents.

Publications

Magentic-UI: Towards Human-in-the-loop Agentic Systems

Hussein Mozannar, Gagan Bansal, Cheng Tan, Adam Fourney, Victor Dibia, Jingya Chen, Jack Gerrits, Tyler Payne, Matheus Kunzler Maldaner, Madeleine Grunde-McLaughlin, Eric Zhu, Griffin Bassman, Jacob Alber, Peter Chang, Ricky Loynd, Friederike Niedtner, Ece Kamar, Maya Murad, Rafah Hosn, Saleema Amershi

Microsoft Research AI Frontiers (arXiv preprint). 2025.

Project PDF Blog Code

Seeing Twice: How Side-by-Side T2I Comparison Changes Auditing Strategies

Matheus Kunzler Maldaner, Wesley Hanwen Deng, Jason I. Hong, Ken Holstein, Motahhare Eslami

ACM CI. 2025.

Project PDF Preview

eXpLogic: Explaining Logic Types and Patterns in DiffLogic Networks

Stephen Wormald, David Koblah, Matheus Kunzler Maldaner, Domenic Forte, Damon L. Woodard

ITNG. 2025.

Project PDF Best Student Paper Award

MIRAGE: Multi-model Interface for Reviewing and Auditing Generative Text-to-Image AI

Matheus Kunzler Maldaner, Wesley Hanwen Deng, Jason I. Hong, Ken Holstein, Motahhare Eslami