National Academy of Inventors names six USF faculty to its 2026 class of senior members

usf.edu · Feb 26, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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News Stories February 26, 2026 Honors and Awards The National Academy of Inventors has named six University of South Florida faculty members to its Class of 2026 Senior Members. NAI’s Senior Member recognition program recognizes active faculty, scientists and administrators at NAI member institutions who have successfully produced, patented and commercialized technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society and economic progress. The new NAI Senior Members representing USF are: Rouzbeh Behnia, an assistant professor in the School of Information Systems at the Muma College of Business, received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of South Florida. His research focuses on different aspects of cybersecurity and applied cryptography. He is particularly interested in addressing privacy challenges in AI systems, developing post-quantum cryptographic solutions and enhancing authentication protocols to ensure computation and communication integrity. He has published in top security venues such as IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) and USENIX Security Symposium, as well as leading machine learning venues including Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM). Laura Blair is an associate professor of molecular medicine in the Byrd Alzheimer's Center and Research Institute and a research biologist at the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital. Her contributions to the field include describing how discrete molecular chaperones regulate tau aggregation and toxicity in recombinant, cell, and mouse model systems. The Blair Lab continues to focus on understanding the role of molecular chaperones in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disease, with a particular emphasis on Hsp90 cochaperones, including Aha1 and FKBP51. Kami Kim, Andor Szentivanyi Professor of Medicine, is division director of Infectious Disease and International Medicine at USF and director of Infectious Diseases at Tampa General Hospital. Kim is also co-director of the Center for Global Health Inter-Disciplinary Research and co-director of the Center for Antimicrobial Resistance. She led the clinical and research response at USF and Tampa General Hospital to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in the United States in 2020. Early in the pandemic, when viral testing supplies were short, she with collaborators at USF developed and tested a 3D printed swab, validated the performance of the design in a clinical trial and distributed the design freely. These accomplishments were recognized by an award from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Susana K. Lai-Yuen is an associate professor of industrial and management systems engineering and the program director of the M.S. in Data Intelligence program at the University of South Florida. She received her Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. (Summa Cum Laude) degrees in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University. From 2023 to 2024, she was a visiting professor in the Visual Computing and Machine Intelligence Group at INESC TEC, Porto, Portugal, where she investigated optimization techniques for designing high-performing neural network architectures for more energy-efficient AI systems. Lai-Yuen’s research interests include deep neural network optimization, machine learning and multimodal object detection, with applications in computer vision, medical image analysis, decision support systems and engineering education. Sanghoon Park is a tenured professor and program coordinator of the Learning Design and Technology program at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on enhancing learning experiences through instructional design and emerging technologies, specifically designing motivational interventions for online learners and exploring the implications of Augmented Reality (AR), virtual simulations, and AI-chatbots. With over 50 publications in top-tier journals like Computers and Education, Educational Technology Research and Development and British Journal of Educational Technology, Park has been recognized with numerous awards from AERA and AECT, including multiple Outstanding Publication awards, the Crystal award, the Best Practice award, the Immersive Learning award and the Young Researcher award. Hana Totary-Jain is a professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. An internationally recognized leader in RNA biology, her research focuses on noncoding RNAs in cardiovascular and placental biology and on the development of translational RNA therapeutics, including cell-selective nanotherapies for vascular inflammation, neointimal hyperplasia and antiviral immunity. Totary-Jain holds nine granted patents and her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Gates Foundation. Her honors include the Robert W. Hobson, II, MD Early Career Investigator Award, the Alan T. Hirsch, MD Mid-Career Award and was elected a Fellow of the American Heart Association. The NAI 2026 class of Senior Members is comprised of 230 emerging inventors from 82 NAI member institutions across the globe who collectively hold more than 2,000 U.S. patents. They will be honored during the Senior Member Induction Ceremony at NAI’s 15th Annual Conference taking place June 1-4th, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. “This year’s Senior Member Class is a truly impressive cohort. These innovators come from a variety of fields and disciplines, translating their technologies into tangible impact,” said Paul R. Sanberg, FNAI, president of NAI. “I commend them on their incredible pursuits and I’m honored to welcome them to the Academy.” Return to article listing