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Three Indian-origin faculty named UF research professors
UFRF Professorships are awarded for three years and include a $5,000 annual salary supplement and a one-time $3,000 research grant.
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Pranavi Sharma - Thu, 30, Apr 2026
- 01:58 EDT
- 13
Kshitij Khare, Desika Narayanan, and Jasmeet Judge / University of Florida
The University of Florida Research Foundation has recognized three Indian-origin faculty members among 34 scholars named 2026 UFRF Professors at the University of Florida. The announcement was made April 28. The program honors faculty for sustained research contributions and their impact across disciplines.
The three recipients are Kshitij Khare, a professor of statistics; Desika Narayanan, an associate professor of astronomy; and Jasmeet Judge, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
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Khare’s work centers on high-dimensional Bayesian inference, including methodology, computation and theory. His research examines estimation of covariance matrices in limited-data settings using structured approaches such as sparsity. He also develops Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and has applied statistical tools to macroeconomic forecasting. Khare has collaborated across fields including chemistry, neuroscience, pharmacy, animal science and molecular biology. He earned his Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University in 2009 and holds prior degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute. He has served in editorial roles for journals including the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B.
Narayanan focuses on theoretical astrophysics, particularly cosmological galaxy evolution, star formation and the interstellar medium. His research uses large-scale numerical simulations to study how small-scale processes such as star formation interact with broader galaxy evolution. His work spans systems from the Milky Way to galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization. Narayanan earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Arizona in 2007 and previously held research positions at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the University of Arizona.
Judge specializes in microwave remote sensing to study how water interacts with soil and vegetation. Her research combines remote sensing data with hydrologic and crop models to analyze soil moisture in the root zone, a key factor in plant growth and land-atmosphere interactions. Her work connects field-level observations with regional and global patterns and supports applications in agriculture, forestry and climate research.
UFRF Professorships are awarded for three years and include a $5,000 annual salary supplement and a one-time $3,000 research grant. Recipients are selected through a peer-reviewed process based on research output, funding, honors and other measures of scholarly impact.
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