UCF in the News

Inflation is hitting the country hard and some UCF students are having to make the hard choice between school supplies and food. UCF says the number of students coming in has doubled this semester – more than 200 students at day. The Knights Helping Knights Pantry is just one of the student support areas the university is raising money for today. UCF hopes to get more donations today to keep this pantry stocked.

Fifteen minutes after South Carolina won the NCAA women’s basketball championship Sunday night, Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley sent a text to Sytia Messer. An hour before the title game between South Carolina and UConn tipped, Messer had been named the next head coach of UCF women’s basketball. “Dawn texted ‘Congratulations. What a great opportunity. What a great university. Go get it done.’ She’s definitely someone I’m going to lean on,” Messer said. “I want us to win on the court, in the classroom and in the community,” Messer said. “We’re going to do those things.”

Although tourism is Orlando's biggest economic driver, UCF's work in shaping the Rosen School of Hospitality Management to train workers in the tourism sector for large employers like Disney and Universal Orlando Resort also led it to apply that approach to emerging tech fields like gaming, UCF President Alexander Cartwright said last week during a roundtable discussion with education leaders. Cartwright said, "Artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, all are things we see as the next big thing for the region. We’re strong in those areas, but I see even more opportunity, and what we want to do is make sure we can provide the workforce that is needed for that."

Three University of Central Florida researchers were awarded millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Defense for the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. The research projects are aimed at facilitating the growth of newly emerging technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense. The awards will support projects that range from advancing hypersonic propulsion to improving semiconductor performance, and will fund the work for the next five years, UCF said. The recipients are Kareem Ahmed, UCF mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor; Tania Roy, UCF nanoscience technology center assistant professor; and Kevin Coffey, UCF materials science and engineering professor.

UCF Lake Nona Medical Center professors are collaborating with Israeli researchers to better understand the human body in a microgravity environment by studying the four space participants, three of which paid for the flight and one of which is a former NASA astronaut. The quartet are set to blast off Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center hitching a ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, which has been contracted by Axiom Space making its first trip to the ISS on a 10-day mission. The studies could lead to huge leaps in space travel and medicinal knowledge bases, but for UCF the studies open an even larger opportunity for research and a nexus between its medical school and the Space Coast.

The University of Central Florida was recently awarded a grant worth $4.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to determine if a pre-packaged pod is an effective method to deploy very efficient heating, cooling and water heating systems to thousands of homes. The DOE awarded $32 million to seven teams that will manage 30 demonstration projects nationwide. Finding effective ways to retrofit existing and older buildings to be more energy efficient is critical considering there are 130 million buildings in the United States today and about 75% of them are expected to still be standing in 2050, according to the DOE.

Colleges need to play a role in ensuring that students are prepared to use technology in the classroom and later on in the workforce, higher education leaders say. Colleges and universities are taking multiple approaches to ensure students are ready for software and technology requirements, including exploring how to integrate those skills into general education. And those basic technology skills are changing, said UCF President Alex Cartwright. Cartwright said that employers who recruit at the 70,000-student Orlando school have told him that they need graduates with skills not just in English and humanities, but also basic tech knowledge.

When a natural or humanitarian disaster occurs halfway around the world, the U.S. Space Force (USSF) aims to send a rocket filled with food, water and other essential supplies to the site in one hour. With the help of UCF researchers, they may be able to achieve this goal within the next decade. UCF is one of seven universities to receive funding through the USSF’s University Consortium Research Opportunity, which connects higher education institutions with the U.S. Department of Defense’s space-related research opportunities. Engineering researchers Michael Kinzel, Tarek Elgohary and Luis Rabelo were awarded the $350,000 grant, which makes them the first UCF researchers to receive funding from the USSF. “Although

There’s an Oviedo warehouse just north of the University of Central Florida that looks normal enough on the outside, but inside its staff and students are creating something otherworldly. Alien dirt — or regolith simulant — is the main product of UCF’s Exolith Lab and is gaining huge demand as the next era of space exploration and projects like NASA’s moonshot Artemis missions prepare to blast off. In 2018 the lab produced a little more than 1,000 pounds of regolith to the scientific community.