UCF in the News

SpaceX’s plan to launch its monstrous Starship-Super Heavy two-stage tandem from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center caught the attention — and concern — of two rival space companies that warn federal officials the up-to-492-foot-tall rocket will be too untested, too dangerous and too potentially disruptive for the nation’s busiest spaceport and the surrounding environment. United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin — which both have significant footprints on the Space Coast and view SpaceX as direct competition — have submitted written concerns to the Federal Aviation Administration. Phil Metzger is director of the Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research & Education at the University of Central Florida. In an email, he said he thinks the ULA statement about Starship is fair, because it asks the FAA to do its job while noting potential impacts on the environment, neighboring communities, and launch operations of other companies at the Cape. “They noted that it is in the national interest to have multiple healthy launch companies for assured access to space so the operations of one company should not shut down its competitors. I think this is all legitimate and should be emphasized,” Metzger said. However, he said he thinks Blue Origin made “a serious mistake” by suggesting a cap on the Starship launch rate. “This would be the least creative and least helpful solution for potential problems at the Cape,” Metzger said.

Some special education practitioners have experimented with using generative artificial intelligence to speed up the mountain of paperwork they’re required to fill out to provide essential services to students with disabilities. But using AI to improve instruction for students with disabilities or learning differences is a different challenge, and one that educators should approach with caution, experts said during a June 25 panel discussion at the International Society for Technology in Education conference here. “There isn’t enough data for us to make a conclusive recommendation at the moment with the use of AI [for students with disabilities],” said Trey Vasquez, the director of the Toni Jennings Exceptional Education Institute and a professor at the University of Central Florida.

Addition Financial Credit Union is joining the University of Central Florida as its latest Pegasus Partner. The Lake Mary-based credit union joins AdventHealth, Orlando Health and Nemours Children’s Health in an enhanced relationship with the university. Besides growing the number of internships available to UCF students and coordinating with faculty to meet business challenges, Addition Financial President and CEO Kevin Miller will serve on the President’s Industry Advisory Council, who will directly work with UCF President Alexander Cartwright and others tied to current topics in the business world. In total, the credit union will grow from 10 to 25 interns.

NASA's first asteroid sample is the most pristine sample of its kind. Now, back on Earth, the sample from asteroid Bennu has already delivered surprising findings about the early solar system and where the asteroid might have come from.

College graduations are in full swing, and many students are gearing up to enter the workforce. With fierce competition and changing job market dynamics, the search for that first job can be daunting. It takes three to six months for the average college grad to secure employment right after graduation and about 53% of college grads are either unemployed or working a job that doesn’t require a degree. Now, it’s time to put that degree to work. Here are some things to keep in mind to prepare you for the job market. “Internships, internships, internships, internships, internships, undergraduate research – whatever it might be to get these richer experiences while they’re here so that they’ll have so much more to share when it comes time for interviews,” said Lynn Hansen, Director of Career Services, University of Central Florida. If you didn’t get any experience before graduation, spend this summer doing an internship to beef up your resume. Second, networking is key. Attend career fairs, alumni events, and professional networking mixers to connect with potential employers. Also, have a good social media presence.“We encourage students to have a very strong LinkedIn profile,” said Hansen.

UCF’s home win over Kansas was one of the highlights of the men’s basketball program’s first season in the Big 12. The Knights will have another opportunity to possibly make history as they’ll host the Jayhawks once again as part of its Big 12 schedule matrix released Thursday. UCF will play a home-and-away series with Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State and TCU. The rest of the home schedule features BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas State and Utah. Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU and Utah will make their first trips to Orlando, while the Knights will visit Colorado and Kansas for the first time. The remaining road schedule is against Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, Texas Tech and West Virginia. The Knights will play 20 conference games as the league expanded its men’s schedule from 18 games. “Every game is hotly contested, I don’t care who you play,” coach Johnny Dawkins recently told the Sentinel. “Every night you go out there, the game will be incredibly competitive.”

Early discovery of debilitating diseases such as cancer or dementia is critical in determining treatment and saving lives. UCF Department of Chemistry Associate Professor Xiaohu Xia recently received a $1.3 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue his promising nanoparticle research that could drastically improve disease detection accuracy by more than 300-times. The NIH awards R01 grants to investigators for mature research projects that are hypothesis-driven with strong preliminary data like Xia's. "In our preliminary laboratory results, we have demonstrated that our nanoparticle-based artificial enzymes are able to improve the detection sensitivity by about 300 times better than the current assets in the market," he says. His research spans four years, and it focuses on enhancing the diagnostic efficacy of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing by using specially tailored nickel-platinum nanoparticles that will bind to specific disease biomarkers – such as proteins and hormones – in bodily fluid samples. Xia is the sole principal investigator, but he will oversee postdoctoral and graduate students who will assist him. Although there has been some experimentation with substituting nanoparticles in ELISA testing, there hasn't been a monumental advancement in diagnostic sensitivity in decades, and Xia says he aims to make the leap through his nanoparticle research.

In a corner of his laboratory, Professor Abel Méndez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, keeps one of his most cherished mementos related to the Arecibo radio telescope. Simple sheets of paper hanging on the wall show the schedule where astronomers and scientists from all over the world were assigned blocks of two to four hours to use the telescope and listen to the universe. Méndez’s initials are still there: AM. For more than 50 years, Arecibo was the world’s largest single-dish telescope. And starting in 2017, Méndez made frequent visits to the Arecibo Observatory, about a 30-minute drive from the university, to focus on the stars. His goal? To explore the habitability of exoplanets. “There are stars that are very active, such as red dwarfs, and others like the sun, which you could say are rather quiet,” he says. “I used the radio telescope to observe which stars were the most stable because those are the ones that planets with a more habitable atmosphere are likely to be around,” he adds. In part, Arecibo helped him understand what to prioritize in his research. Until December 1, 2020, when the telescope collapsed. Luisa Fernanda Zambrano, a Colombian planetary scientist who had observed and classified asteroids with the Arecibo radio telescope since 2013, remembers that painful day: “I cried, my team cried, we were all crying,” she says from her office in the United States, where she works with the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida.

Virtually all state higher education institutions have programs specifically tailored to generate talent for area employers. The following are examples of those efforts from across the state. UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, Orlando UCF’s founding in 1963 was rooted in preparing a workforce for the space race, with the school dubbing itself “Space U.” Now, nearly 30% of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center employees are UCF alumni, and more than 30 are working on the Artemis 1 mission to return astronauts to the moon. UCF also partners with aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin on a work experience program. Students don’t receive credits but do get paid for two consecutive semesters of work — ranging from 15 to 25 hours per week — inside one of two Orlando Lockheed locations. The program is open to undergraduate and graduate students, with nearly 60% of the 650 students who participate each year landing job offers upon graduation. For students who prefer more of a fantasy world, UCF’s highly regarded game design programs help 85% of graduates land jobs in the industry with a mean starting salary of $81,300. Gaming giant Electronic Arts moved to Orlando’s Creative Village in 2022 and partners with UCF’s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy.