UCF in the News

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.

Russia continues to degrade its role in the space industry, alienating itself from international customers it has long supplied space resources to because President Vladimir Putin refused to back down from the attack on Ukraine. Since Russia began its invasion last week, the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin refused to launch a UK-satellite company's payloads and stopped supplying Russian-built rocket engines to U.S. customers and threatened to cut ties with its International Space Station partners, including NASA. University of Central Florida space policy expert Roger Handberg said Russia has lost its upper hand. "They’re not getting money because a good part of their space program had been selling seats on Soyuz missions to the United States," Handberg said. "The Russians have lost their leverage, as you say, over the United States because they provided the access. Now we have independent access."

College counseling centers are relying on data to guide support as student needs and campus operations continue to change drastically in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. To find the best way to support students facing unprecedented challenges while pursuing their degrees, colleges are tapping into robust data from electronic medical records and looking to a national research infrastructure to back requests for resources. But counseling centers can’t rely on data from previous years to guide current services because of the dramatic changes students faced both on and off campus during the pandemic, experts told EdScoop. “We really look at things like how many scheduled appointments we have, how many attended appointments, since there’s also no-shows and cancellations,” said Vanessa Stein, assistant director for outreach and prevention at the University of Central Florida. “[We look at] how clients are served, what the type of presenting concerns are — so is it anxiety, is it grief, is it trauma — and that helps us kind of determine our staffing needs.”

Imagine boarding a flight from Orlando to Los Angeles and instead of languishing on the plane for five and half hours, you arrive in about an hour, ready to enjoy the palm trees on the Pacific Coast six times faster. That may be decades away but the hypersonic propulsion technology that could make it possible is currently being developed in a University of Central Florida lab. UCF has been researching hypersonic propulsion for six years, funded by $7.86 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Air Force, and other sources. A team of 33 students led by four faculty researchers is exploring and experimenting with this new technology. Hypersonic propulsion aims to send a yet-to-be-designed aircraft out of the atmosphere to travel at hypersonic speed, which is about six times faster than the speed of a commercial airplane. But this research goes beyond commercial travel and has become a competitive field among developed nations, said Subith Vasu, a professor in UCF’s department of mechanical and aerospace engineering. “Russia is working on it, China is working on it, and then other countries in the European Union, Japan, India,” he said. “It is very difficult, so nobody really has a real hypersonic vehicle. Some people claim that they have but it is only pretending they do because there are a lot of technical challenges.” One of those challenges could be the effect of rain droplets on a vehicle traveling at hypersonic speeds. Michael Kinzel, project co-investigator and assistant professor in UCF’s department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, said that every time speed is doubled, the impact force from a raindrop quadruples. With hypersonic speed, they are going six times faster. Researchers are trying to figure out how to design a vehicle that can withstand that kind of pressure as it travels through the rain.

UCF was one of nine Florida universities and colleges that has partnered up with Amazon to provide free tuition through its Career Choice program. All hourly, full- and part-time workers pursuing a bachelor’s, certification, English language proficiency, or high school completion program are eligible to apply. Dean of the College of Undergraduate Studies Theodorea Regina Berry says the program is just another way the university can support its working students and help foster economic growth. “And for many of the students who work for Amazon who might be first in their family to go to college, this would in fact have the opportunity to increase the social mobility of those students. And so we’re extremely excited about our ability to continue to provide that opportunity to those students.” Berry says it’s a win-win for both UCF and Amazon. “And professionally, I’m sure that is a benefit for Amazon and academically it certainly is a benefit to those prospective students. UCF intends to continue to collaborate with corporate and civic partners to prepare students to become workforce innovators, to become future leaders and to continue to be contributors to the community.”

Research into Florida sea turtles got a boost this week, thanks to the donation of a specially outfitted boat. Officials said a trio of donors donated the boat to the University of Central Florida’s Marine Turtle Research Group. The new boat will help the group continue its studies on the biology, ecology, behavior and conservation of sea turtles across all life stages, from eggs to adults. The boat replaces a 1976 craft reaching the end of its lifespan. Officials said the new boat is designed to enhance the team’s research and conservation capabilities, providing additional balancing and buoyancy along with features that will aid in interacting with sea turtles on the water. “The new boat is an essential tool for undergraduate and graduate research,” said Associate Professor Kate Mansfield, the director of the MTRG. “And we’re grateful to have a safe, sturdy and balanced boat that can handle our team, our heavy net, and the sea turtles we catch and release.”

A team of therapists at the University of Central Florida has been developing a new way to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using virtual reality. UCF Psychology Professor Deborah Beidel is also the Executive Director of UCF Restores, a therapy center dedicated to changing the ways we diagnose and treat PTSD. Now, they’re using technology to develop a whole new method of treatment. “There’s no therapy that is going to erase that memory from them,” Beidel said. “What we can do is help them put that memory in a place in their long-term memory, like a filing cabinet, where it doesn’t dominate them every day.” Dr. Beidel and her team have been using virtual reality to treat PTSD since 2011, responding to tragedies like the shooting at Pulse Nightclub, and the collapse of a condominium building in Surfside. They’ve received multiple honors for their work, inspiring them to develop a new clinical trial, testing a system that allows Beidel’s team to build complex scenarios to focus their treatments for a variety of traumas, including assault victims and first responders. “We have developed a bar. We have developed a car fire…we have developed something that looks like a school. And then what we can do is just go back into the system and change the details,” Beidel explained.