UCF in the News

The State of Florida is now home to over 1 million Puerto Ricans, the majority of whom live in Central Florida. UCF’S Puerto Rico Research Hub partnered with the MLB for the very first Puerto Rico Baseball Day. Hundreds of kids showed up to the event.

The University of Central Florida’s graduate game design program is getting some kudos as downtown Orlando is becoming a pipeline for video game developers. The Princeton Review and PC Gamer magazine rated UCF’s program, which is called the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, as the No. 1 in the world for the third straight year.

A new mission called Lunar Trailblazer is set to launch two satellites by 2025 with the goal of mapping the lunar surface and understanding the form and distribution of water on the moon. “It’s cold enough at the South Pole, and at the North Pole, to house ice and water,” says UCF planetary geologist Professor Kerri Donaldson Hanna. “But we’ve never actually made real detections of it. This will give us our first opportunities to do that.” Donaldson Hanna is the co-investigator of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission which consists of two science instruments about the size of a desk. They’ll launch to the moon together and orbit the moon and collect data from above the lunar surface

UCF President Alexander Cartwright joined USF President Rhea Law and UF President Kent Fuchs at Synapse Summit 2022 to celebrate a 25-year legacy of innovation as partners in the Florida High Tech Corridor and unveil a commitment to “unleash the region’s ‘expotential.’” The three university presidents participated in a discussion moderated by The Corridor CEO Paul Sohl, retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, about the hallmark partnership approach, the role of universities in Florida’s innovation economy and how their universities are preparing the next generation of innovators.

Dr. Gulnora Hundley works in the Counselor Education Program at UCF and is making it her mission to give back and use her experience as a Russian speaker to better connect with therapists over in Ukraine.

If you’ve seen the Marvel movie Black Panther, you know all about the power suit. Now, researchers at University of Central Florida are taking a note, and making their own power suit – for electric vehicles and NASA space flights. "This is the exact ‘Black Panther' suit like you see in the movie," said Deepak Pandey, a student at UCF. Researchers at UCF have spent the last four years turning this super suit into reality. "What we are trying to do is to store energy on the outer shell of electric cars," said Dr. Jayan Thomas, a professor of nanoscience technology at UCF. "This material is lighter than steel. It is lighter than even aluminum. At the same time, it can store energy," Dr. Thomas said. It quite literally would encase the vehicle as a suit. "You can use it as the roof of your electric car and it can harvest energy this part. And energy could be stored into this composite," Dr. Thomas said. Dr. Thomas and his students are also working with NASA to add the technology to space flights.

UCF’s Limbitless Solutions will lead a new, first-of-its-kind clinical trial this spring to examine how the brain adapts to advanced, bionic arms in children born without a limb. Officials said its ultimate goal is to improve children’s control of their prosthetics. The research will be done in partnership with Wolfson Children’s Hospital of Jacksonville and Nemours Children’s Health, Jacksonville. Limbitless Solutions was one of Orlando Business Journal's 25 winners of the 2022 Orlando Inno Fire Awards. Winners were chosen based on major milestones like overall growth, innovative ways of doing things, funding rounds, product launches and social impact. These companies and the entrepreneurs who birthed them are developing innovative products, building Central Florida workforces and doing the hard work necessary to raise funds — all in an effort to bring their visions to fruition.

UCF political science/criminal justice student Ashley Cardona looks at the stats that show lack of representation of Latinos in law fields and wants to make a difference. Almost 20% of the U.S. population is Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census. But only about 5% of lawyers in America are Hispanic, data from the Florida Bar Association shows. Cardona hopes to be part of an uptick in those numbers and be the change in that representation by becoming a criminal defense attorney.

UCF’s Limbitless Solutions will lead a new, first-of-its-kind clinical trial this spring to examine how the brain adapts to advanced, bionic arms in children born without a limb. Officials said the four-month clinical trial will examine if Limbitless’ prosthetic, paired with its custom training video game, will impact the motor control center of the brain. Researchers will closely monitor any changes in the signals the brain sends to the muscle groups that direct the bionic arms’ movement. “It may provide new insight to how the brain’s motor cortex adapts to learning how to use our organic, or robotic, limbs,” said Albert Manero, executive director and co-founder of Limbitless Solutions.