UCF in the News

NASA is hiring new talent to rebuild its "core competencies" and meet the agency's aggressive moon deadlines. This push could reinvigorate the workforce and help NASA launch its moon rocket about every 10 months. But the timing comes just two months after thousands of civil servants received their final paycheck from last year's buyouts, suggesting the workforce reductions were not conducive to NASA's long-term goals.Greg Autry, associate provost for space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida, recognized the organizational theory behind NASA's buyouts and more recent hiring announcements. He said NASA is a place where people work until they retire. There hasn't been enough "DNA transfer" from the private sector. "Giving some folks the opportunity to move on with a generous exit plan and filling new seats with people who have had different experiences can bring new thinking and a sense of change the agency really needed," Autry said in an email.

The founding leader of the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine is preparing to leave her role after 20 years. Deborah German will continue to serve in her role as founding dean of the College of Medicine and vice president for health affairs while a national search is held for her successor. German arrived at UCF in 2006 from Vanderbilt University and helped establish the medical college as the anchor institution of the 650-acre Lake Nona Medical City campus. The college admitted its first class in 2009 and opened its first building in 2010. “When Dr. German came to UCF, many believed building a medical school from the ground up – at a young university, in a brand new medical city – was too ambitious, too complex and too risky," UCF President Alexander Cartwright said in a prepared statement. "Deb saw possibilities where others saw barriers. Because she dared, the UCF College of Medicine is now an engine of talent, research and impact that is shaping health care for generations.”

Downtown Orlando has struggled with vacant storefronts, declining daytime foot traffic, and concerns about safety and public perception since the pandemic.Now, city leaders and arts organizations are trying a different strategy by using public art to temporarily transform empty retail spaces and draw people back into the city’s core. Graduate students from the University of Central Florida are installing a 28-foot immersive art structure inside the 55 West building as part of the POP UP Creative Storefronts Initiative.“It’s a celebration of what the arts can be when they come together, to create something that is bigger together than it would be as individual parts,” said Laura Lambert, a UCF graduate student who worked on the project.The installation is part of a broader effort to use temporary art displays and cultural programming to inject energy into downtown spaces that would otherwise sit empty. Organizers say the concept benefits both artists and property owners. For the students who designed the piece, the goal is not only to create something visually striking but also to encourage people to slow down and reconnect with the space around them. “I think every little bit does a bit to help people become more aware of their surroundings to celebrate what’s happening downtown,” said UCF graduate student Chris Blem. The installation will not stay in one place for long. After its time at the 55 West building, it will move to another location in the city. “Once this project leaves here, it’s going to go over to Dr. Phillips Center for two weeks for UCF Celebrates the Arts,” said Heather Gibson with the UCF College of Arts and Humanities.

AI is accelerating productivity across nearly every industry. Code is written faster. Decisions surface sooner. Work moves at a pace that would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago. Alongside those gains, a quieter risk is emerging: the underuse of core human cognitive skills. A recent World Economic Forum report identified creative skills like critical thinking, judgment and problem-solving skills as both increasingly important and increasingly difficult to find at scale. Research from the MIT Media Lab has also found that using AI can lead to "cognitive atrophy," where reliance on intelligent systems can reduce independent reasoning and decision making over time. Theory-based learning is effective for transferring information. What it struggles to do is reveal how people reason under uncertainty. A study conducted mainly by researchers from the University of Central Florida found in 2010 that traditional instruction can often fails to translate knowledge into real-world decision making, particularly in complex or dynamic environments.

Local emergency managers, the behind-the-scenes coordinators who mobilize help during disasters, have raised the same point time and again: We need adequate resources to protect people in harm’s way — before the harm arrives. In some notable cases, resources didn’t come soon enough. Claire Connolly Knox, who directs the University of Central Florida’s master’s program for emergency and crisis management, has been studying what a “decentralized FEMA” could mean for state agencies. She said it could take several legislative cycles before states are prepared to fill in the gaps that changes to FEMA might create. Many states, Knox said, are not closely tracking spending across multiple departments and multiple phases of emergency management, meaning “we don’t know the true cost” of mitigating, preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters. “When you start breaking that down,” Knox said. “You start seeing that this isn’t a quick fix.”

Engineering students and faculty at the University of Central Florida are using science and technology to tackle real-world problems. As part of Engineers Week, researchers are showcasing projects focused on issues including disaster preparedness, public health, and digital security.