UCF in the News

The University of Central Florida (UCF) is $10 million closer in its fight to stop the state’s nursing shortage. The school announced a new donation Thursday that will be used toward constructing a new, larger nursing school in Lake Nona to churn out more graduates. Dr. Philips Charities gave the money, the largest donation in the UCF College of Nursing’s history. “Our mission is to give with purpose, and the purpose could not be more clear here — nurses save lives and our community has a great need for more talented nurses. Their hands, minds and hearts impact us all in some way,” said Ken Robinson, president and CEO of Dr. Phillips, Inc., and the Dr. P. Phillips Foundation. UCF plans to build a $64 million, 90,000-square-foot building equipped with cutting-edge technology and lab space at Lake Nona, the same site as the UCF College of Medicine and the UCF Lake Nona Hospital. The school’s goal is to open in the 2025-26 school year, UCF spokesman Chad Binette said. “This is a transformational project that has wide-reaching impact for our region, and we will need the support of our entire community to help us reach our goal of educating more Knight nurses to positively impact more patient lives, and guide 21st-century healthcare,” UCF’s nursing dean Mary Lou Sole said earlier this year.

A local mom was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Her 6-year-old son was born without an arm. She said insurance wouldn’t cover it and buying one would cost thousands of dollars. So, Alyson Pring tried to print her son Alex a 3-D arm but didn’t know how. She reached out to a UCF college student. Albert Manero and his friends got to work printing Alex Pring a new prosthetic arm and presented it to him just weeks later. The former UCF student, Albert Manero is now the Co-Founder and President of Limbitless Solutions. He tells News 6 anchors and Florida’s Fourth Estate hosts Matt Austin and Ginger Gadsden, “it’s been incredible to see the progress.” “Being able to go from the kitchen table to now a full research facility here at UCF in just 8 years has been unbelievable and has been such a journey to get here,” Manero says. Just last year, Manero says Limbitless Solutions moved into a new lab that “expanded our footprint about three times the size of our old lab.” He says helping kids struggling with limb differences is incredibly rewarding. “We’ve actually grown our program of UCF under graduate students, working in their internships and research work with us, to now over 45 students a semester,” says Manero.

Scientists at the University of Central Florida are working to create a composite material that they hope will prevent scrubs like the one that happened Sept. 3 on the Artemis launchpad because of a hydrogen leak. "This is one of the biggest projects I have ever had before," said UCF aerospace engineering professor Dr. Jan Gou. Students are working to cure composite tile - similar to what would be used on a space rocket - by subjecting it to pressure 17 times higher than sea level, and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. "What we are left with is a ceramic composite able to withstand some really high temperatures," said Chris Varela, a UCF grad student who is working on the project. The team uses acetylene torches to test whether the composite can withstand the high temperatures required for spaceflight. "They are traditionally used for cutting steel," said student Richard Chapman. "Heat it up to a temperature that is similar to what it would see in a hydrogen combustion turbine."

The bloom is off the rose that was Big Tech. Share prices have fallen. Workers are being laid off. Anger at the sector is widespread in both political parties. The biggest tech companies in China are facing their own headwinds, thanks to the increasingly intrusive rule of Xi Jinping. But that doesn’t change the fact that America needs to stay ahead of China in the business of innovation. Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet has publicly cited the importance of schools like Penn State and the University of Central Florida as feeder institutions for his company’s technical workforce. One facet of that relationship is the preparation of engineers to work in disciplines such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. The company employs 10,000 software engineers, virtually all of whom are university-trained.

Tropical Storm Nicole made landfall as a hurricane early Thursday morning, unleashing strong winds on NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) where the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was left stranded on the launchpad. In anticipation of the storm, NASA further delayed the launch of the SLS rocket for its Artemis 1 mission to the Moon. “There was a risk in leaving it on the pad, but there was another risk if they had rolled it back, since the act of moving it causes swaying and mechanical loading of the vehicle, too,” Philip Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, who used to work at NASA’s KSC, told Gizmodo in an email. “Either way, the vehicle would be stressed, so NASA was forced into placing a bet whether one choice or the other would cause less strain.”

Medical tattoos, designed to replicate nipples and camouflage scars, have become popular. A medical-tattoo artist and two clients say the tattoos have physical and emotional benefits. Medical tattoos have become popular in recent years. Researchers at the University of Central Florida said in a paper published in the journal Aesthetic Surgery Journal Open Forum in 2021 that the technique was "increasingly used with many medical conditions," adding that it could help camouflage scars, burns, and vitiligo.

The University of Central Florida Police Department now has the ability to livestream a police officer’s body camera video directly into their headquarters. The technology isn’t new — but using it on a college campus is. Sgt. Greg Larkin demonstrated the capability for News 6 from an upstairs conference room at UCF police headquarters. We watched live as his officer down the road handed out a ticket. “Supervisors can use it for review or gathering intelligence in real time,” Larkin said. “So you might pull up a live stream just to make sure an officer is doing what he or she is supposed to be doing or to make sure an officer is OK.” Larkin, in charge of body-worn technology for the department, is responsible for keeping the body cameras up to date. Rapidly improving camera quality and deteriorating battery life now require the cameras to be upgraded every 2.5 years.

From the oldest to the youngest-- Inflation is forcing some to make some tough decisions. Some college students have to choose between paying for school, paying rent and actually eating. UCF Knights Helping Knights Food Pantry is a safety net for many students. Skipping meals can have a ripple effect. National studies say food insecure college students are more likely to drop classes and are 40 percent less like to graduate.

The most important time to prepare for a hurricane is before a storm has formed. The Tampa Bay Times spoke with 14 experts working in fields related to storm preparation, response and recovery, about how to prepare for natural disaster — and where people go wrong. Evacuation behavioral studies have found that people who have a plan in place before a storm is forecast are more likely to evacuate when orders are called, said hazard geographer Chris Emrich. Emrich, who is a founding member of the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research at the University of Central Florida, studies people’s really bad days. His job is to look at disasters and understand how to make them less devastating. People often make the mistake of being reactive, he said, instead of proactive when it comes to hurricane preparation. The latter is dangerous. The threat of an oncoming storm is stressful, he said, and evacuating can be resource intensive. If you live in an evacuation zone, Emrich said, it’s important to prepare before pressure compounds. “That will really reduce the amount of stress when it comes time to evacuate because you’ve already thought about it,” Emrich said.