The day before Helene slammed into the Big Bend — about a dozen UF faculty members, staff, and graduate students from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering arrived at Cedar Key’s beach to install a UF-developed storm-monitoring tower called a Sentinel. These 33-foot-tall devices collect data on wind, storm surge, waves, and water quality before, during, and after a hurricane makes landfall.

It reports data back to researchers in real-time. The goal is to analyze the data collected on wind, surge, and water impacts that could be used to mitigate coastal damage, property damage, and structural vulnerabilities that could endanger life.

This was the Sentinels’ first full deployment — a “landmark moment,” noted College of Engineering interim Dean Forrest Masters, who helped launch the program and design the Sentinels.

The project is one of five components of the newly funded UF & Sport Collaborative that was announced in December. This multi-faceted initiative aims to make UF a global leader in sports performance, healthcare, and communication, while highlighting world-class sports facilities and partnerships.

The project aims to build an infrastructure to enable AI-powered athletics based on the wearable sensor and health data of student-athletes. The goal is to generate pilot data and initial publications that will then lead to large-scale research proposal for federal agencies.

Dan Ferris, Ph.D., and the Robert W. Adenbaum Professor of Engineering Innovation in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, says this project is unique in higher education.

“With the large-scale hiring across campus in AI-related fields, UF is unique in the capabilities and resources it can dedicate to this type of research,” said Ferris. ““The UAA collects a large amount of data from UF student-athletes on health, nutrition, and sports performance, including wearable sensors at practices and games. Most of the data is under-analyzed and under-utilized, and our proposed treatment of the data could greatly benefit team performance and student-athlete health and well-being.”