CISE, Malachowsky Hall 5406, lok@ufl.edu, CV, LinkedIn
Professor · Entrepreneur
Faculty Lead for the University of Florida NSF I-Corps program
I work at the intersection of research and entrepreneurship—identifying promising technologies, figuring out what they can become, and helping researchers and founders turn ideas into things that matter.
My career has taken me from pioneering research in virtual patients and virtual humans, to co-founding Shadow Health, to building autonomous hospital robotics as co-founder and CTO of Rovex Technologies.
$25.6 M+
External Funding
160+
Peer-reviewed publications
IEEE VR Academy
Inaugural Class
Rovex Technologies
CTO & Co-Founder
Shadow Health
Co-Founder · Acquired by Elsevier
tl;dr – I’m not recruiting new students.
About
I am a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Florida and a technology entrepreneur. For more than two decades, my work has explored how people interact with emerging technologies—and how promising ideas make the difficult transition from research into the real world.
I was an early pioneer in virtual patients and virtual humans, helping establish their use for healthcare education, communication training, and patient engagement. That work grew into a research program spanning human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, virtual and mixed reality, psychology, and healthcare.
In 2010, I co-founded Shadow Health based on ideas and intellectual property that emerged from my research lab. Shadow Health grew into a widely used virtual-patient education platform before being acquired by Elsevier in 2020.
Today, I am co-founder and CTO of Rovex Technologies, where I lead technology and product strategy for autonomous robots designed to improve hospital operations.
Across these roles, I keep coming back to the same questions: Which emerging technologies actually matter? What should we build with them? And how do we move a good idea from research into something people genuinely use?
What I’m Interested in Now
I’m especially interested in the space between a promising idea and a meaningful product.
That includes identifying research with commercial potential, helping technical founders think through product and technology strategy, and mentoring researchers and entrepreneurs.
I welcome opportunities to speak and collaborate on virtual humans, AI, healthcare technology, human-computer interaction, and what I’ve learned moving between academia and entrepreneurship.