UCF in the News

This year, the Knights clinched the program’s first regular-season championship as members of the American Athletic Conference in dominant fashion , 74-39, over Cincinnati. It is the program’s first regular-season conference title in 17 years since UCF was part of the ASUN in 2005.

Americans have been feeling the pain of higher prices with the most recent inflation numbers at 7.5%. Though the crisis in Ukraine may feel a world away, economists project ramifications in the U.S., especially when it comes to gas. Dr. Axel Stock is a professor at the University of Central Florida and expert in supply chain management. Stock says 54% of what the U.S. imports from Russia is refined and crude oil. He says when that supply is decreased, the price on the world markets goes up.

In a galaxy not so far away (Florida, in fact), Disney will soon open its long-awaited, much-anticipated Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, the two-night cruise-like hotel experience that promises to gives uber fans a chance to live out their own Star Wars adventure. "I believe if this turns out to be something as successful or popular as Disney hopes, we're going to see this kind of experience translated into multiple different kinds of IP [intellectual property]," said Peter Weishar, professor and director of themed experience at the University of Central Florida. "This kind of thing has been done to some level with LARP or live-action role-playing, where you take a weekend or better part of a week and become a character, but never to this kind of extent or detail," he said.

Lack of hospital residencies is cited as a big reason for today’s doctor shortage. A Tallahassee hospital will soon offer residencies to medical students in the hope many of them will settle down in the Capital City, thus helping alleviate the local shortage. The initiative is being done in conjunction with the University of Central Florida, although hospital officials emphasize the program is open to students from other schools. Capital Regional Medical Center CEO Alan Keesee said the residencies, in the fields of psychiatry and dermatology, will get underway this summer.

As the world lessens its dependence on fossil fuels, industries and manufacturers are turning to lithium-ion batteries to power the machines that make modern life possible. These batteries power electric vehicles, mobile phones, drones, vacuum cleaning robots and other machines, and will be an essential component to the energy transition. But there's a problem with lithium-ion batteries: As they age and are charged, they develop dendrites. A research team from the University of Houston is trying to solve the dendrite problem by investigating how these structures grow on batteries. Authors on the paper include Huajun Tian, Zho Li and Yang Yang with the University of Central Florida.

Capital Regional Medical Center in Tallahassee has launched their first-ever Graduate Medical Residency Program in partnership with the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. The new program will train residents in dermatology and psychiatric medicine and is accredited by the Council of Graduate Medical Education. The psychiatric residency is the first and only program of its kind in the Big Bend region, according to CRMC.

When researchers at the University of Central Florida filmed unmasked people speaking and coughing, they found that aerosols and droplets travelled about four feet. When those people wore surgical masks, aerosols went only a few inches. They couldn’t see any aerosols when people wore N95s. “What we found is that the propagation of aerosols and droplets in a cloth mask was on the order of like two feet for speech and 2.2 feet for a cough,” says Kareem Ahmed, senior author on the study, and an aerospace researcher at the University of Central Florida. “That’s still relatively large. If we’re speaking to each other, you’re most likely going to be within one to two feet.”

The University of Central Florida on Tuesday announced it is developing technology so readers can personalize digital materials to make them easier to read and comprehend. UCF, Google, Adobe and Readability Matters, a nonprofit group that focuses on accessibility through digital formatting, on Tuesday announced the “Readability Consortium,” a network of more than 50 researchers to further research on the link between personalized formatting and readability, as well as to create digital tools that can apply preferences across digital texts. Font and spacing can affect how quickly people read, to the extent that the right formatting can act as digital “reading glasses,” UCF assistant professor Ben Sawyer told EdScoop.

Being a good counselor requires compassion and discretion, but those aren't the only qualities that count. The ability to remain objective and calm during upsetting circumstances is vital, according to licensed counselors, as is the capacity to prevent someone else's bad mood from dampening your morale. Introspection and self-discipline are also essential. "You really have to understand what your own background is and how it is going to influence your ability to help others," explains W. Bryce Hagedorn, professor and program director of counseling education at the University of Central Florida. To provide useful guidance to people who are hurting, he says, it is imperative to understand the sources of pain in your own life.