UCF in the News

The University of Central Florida College of Medicine has launched a new aerospace medicine clinic for pilots and future aviation professionals in the region. The UCF Health Aerospace Medicine Clinic is now the only academic FAA Aviation Medical Exam Clinic in Central Florida. It offers specialized aviation medicine services and performs FAA-mandated medical exams for pilots at all levels, from recreational flyers to commercial airline pilots.

Microbiologist Taseen Desin with the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine joined WESH 2 News live on Tuesday to answer your questions: How worried should we be about the cyclospora outbreak? "So, it's definitely a parasite that can cause gastrointestinal disease. We've heard terms like 'explosive diarrhea,' which can make a person quite afraid or worried, but it is relative. Relative to other pathogens or other gastrointestinal diseases. It is a pathogen that causes similar symptoms. It can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and if we take care of ourselves, I think most of us are able to handle it if we stay hydrated, if we contact our healthcare officials at the right times, if we make sure that we wash our produce," Dr. Desin said.

Sticky or slippery? Snails can change their slime to meet the moment Snails are slimy. But there's more to that goo of theirs than meets the eye. It's a fact that may help inspire the creation of new materials. Slime is splattered across the animal kingdom. In a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers reveal that these snails tune the relative proportions of certain proteins and ions to create five different types of mucus, each with their own function and distinctive properties. "There are immense potential applications," says Kausik Mukhopadhyay, a materials scientist at the University of Central Florida who wasn't involved in the study. "It could be cancer research, drug delivery, cosmetics." He says that the lubricant mucus could be tweaked for use with catheters to help them glide into place in the body with less friction. The adhesive mucus, he adds, might be developed into something to help close a wound. In other words, there's much to learn from a slimy snail. "Nature is always smarter than us," says Mukhopadhyay. "We are just maybe 0.1% to what nature has synthesized — that is where we are right now."

The University of Central Florida College of Medicine on Thursday unveiled a new aerospace medicine clinic to serve pilots in need of medical care. University leaders and aviation specialists turned out for the announcement at the UCF College of Medicine in Lake Nona. The clinic is at the College of Medicine’s clinical practice in Lake Nona, UCF Health Faculty Physician Practice. Minutes away from Orlando International Airport, staff said the location will help serve local and traveling pilots in one of the nation’s busiest aviation hubs. "We're looking at ways to apply different extreme environments to research so that we can use it not only for space exploration and those applications, but also for Earth-based scenarios as well — people who go into extreme environments in very remote areas of the world," said Ed Powers, chief medical officer for the UCF Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine. Powers said the clinic has already soft-launched and has seen patients for aviation medicine. It offers specialized exams, screenings and referrals that connect pilots with different specialties in one area.

Orlando Family Stage plans to expand its educational offerings for the 2026–2027 season with new classes, performance opportunities, and family-focused programs. The organization also continues its long-standing collaboration with the University of Central Florida’s nationally recognized Theatre for Young Audiences graduate program. Through the partnership, graduate students gain professional experience working on productions and educational programming while contributing to new play development and research. According to Orlando Family Stage, its education team includes full-time staff, professional teaching artists, classroom educators, working theatre professionals, and UCF graduate students, many of whom have served Central Florida families for more than a decade.

The University of Central Florida's Exolith Lab features a Regolith Bin to simulate the moon's surface for research. Simulated moon soil, or regolith, is extremely abrasive and poses significant challenges for equipment and astronauts. Lunar dust is considered a major hazard because it can damage spacesuits, clog mechanisms and interfere with electronics. Shielded by white protective suits and powered air-purifying respirators, four college students dug into dusty, sharp-edged simulated moon soil amid the otherworldly environment of the University of Central Florida's Regolith Bin. This airlock-equipped 10-by-10-meter enclosure at UCF's Exolith Lab serves as a rare space-hardware test bed where researchers can help refine NASA's vision of building humanity's first lunar base near the moon's south pole from ground level. Jared Long-Fox, a UCF planetary exploration research scientist, said simulated moon regolith feels like flour to the touch — but this material proves extremely abrasive.

NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be the premier exoplanet-hunting space telescope once it launches sometime in the 2040s. This large infrared/optical/ultraviolet space telescope will be the first observatory specifically designed to search for rocky planets orbiting within their parent stars' circumsolar habitable zones (HZs) and characterize their atmospheres. Its powerful suite of instruments will also enable cutting-edge astrophysics research to address the greatest cosmological mysteries astronomers face today. To carry out its objectives, the HWO will require exceptional stability and precision, particularly in measuring and controlling the wavefront of light as it propagates through the telescope and coronagraph system. Researchers at the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) are developing this technology to help the HWO and other next-generation telescopes detect habitable planets.

College student Ashley LaFlamme had been studying the Troubles when she got an opportunity to see history firsthand. She was one of the University of Central Florida students who recently returned from an eight-day trip through the school’s new Conflict Transformation Program to learn more about Northern Ireland’s peace. “Being in person and seeing the neighborhoods where this historical event was happening … it makes what you’ve learned real,” said LaFlamme, 19, a rising junior from Longwood. “That is a whole other level than just sitting in a classroom and learning about something. The UCF students got to meet and talk with Bertie Ahern, the former Irish Prime Minister, and hear from the people who fought on both sides.

Artificial intelligence is now emerging as a strategic priority across higher education, but many institutions are still determining how to move from experimentation to institution-wide adoption. According to the 2025 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study, 57 percent of institutions now view AI as a strategic priority, yet only 22 percent have implemented an institution-wide AI strategy. This gap reveals a broader challenge facing colleges and universities as they modernize technology and rethink the student experience. As institutional priorities, student expectations and AI capabilities continue changing, technology strategies also need to evolve. Governance works best when leaders revisit technology portfolios, evaluate adoption, clarify ownership, and retire tools no longer delivering meaningful value. Those conversations help institutions reduce complexity before it becomes technical debt and ensure new investments continue advancing the digital experience. The University of Central Florida expanded digital services across departments over time instead of treating implementation as the end of the journey. The ongoing review process helped the university build on existing investments while introducing new capabilities in a deliberate, coordinated way.