The UF College of Medicine community will get a firsthand look at a new course designed to familiarize clinicians with the tools and possibilities surrounding artificial intelligence in medicine at Research Day on April 6.

The course — the first of three the college community will have to learn about AI — has been in development over the past several months as part of the education pillar in the strategic plan.

The first course will provide clinicians with the fundamentals of AI, give insight into how it can be used in medicine and show how clinicians can become involved with campuswide experts in the field, said Francois Modave, Ph.D., one of the project's leaders.

Riley Jones, M.D., an adjunct clinical postdoctoral global health fellow in the UF College of Medicine’s division of hospital medicine, recently traveled to Ukraine for about a week in mid-March with eight other volunteers and a war crimes investigator as a volunteer with the humanitarian and health nongovernmental organization MedGlobal.

Since 2010, when he first journeyed abroad to provide humanitarian assistance in Haiti following its devastating earthquake, Jones has traveled across the globe to assist the wounded and help shocked health systems adapt.

“Physicians are trained on how to deal with these injuries, but not at this scale,” Jones said. “Nobody takes a course in medical school called 'how to be a doctor in a combat zone.'”

The UF College of Medicine retained its spot as the state’s top-ranked medical school and remains among the nation’s premier institutions, according to new graduate school rankings issued Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report.

The college is ranked No. 16 for research among public universities and No. 37 in the nation overall. In primary care, the college ranked 34th nationally for public institutions and No. 48 overall. In the U.S. News diversity index, the College of Medicine is No. 19 among public universities and No. 26 overall.

Factors used to compile the College of Medicine rankings include a nationwide survey of faculty and academic administrators, faculty-to-student ratio, federal research funding and acceptance rates. In recent years, the College of Medicine has adopted novel approaches for discovery and medical education, including being a national leader in advancing the application of artificial intelligence. Its faculty also includes world-renowned physicians and scientists.