UCF in the News

For the first time in school history, UCF softball will be hosting an NCAA regional. The Knights, a national 16-seed, were the final team picked Sunday night to host three other schools — Michigan, South Dakota State and Villanova — in an NCAA regional. “It’s a dream come true,” UCF sophomore Jada Cody said. “I’m excited to celebrate with the team.

When UCF coach Gus Malzahn and athletic director Terry Mohajir talk with Knights fans about their impending move from the AAC to the Big 12, the excitement is obvious. “This is what they’ve been hoping for, for many years now,” Mohajir said. “Hope is not a plan, though.” As that move approaches, Mohajir, Malzahn and the rest of the Knights are implementing an actual plan to have UCF competitive as soon as it rises into that Power Five league (potentially as soon as the summer of 2023).

At the center of our galaxy lies a supermassive black hole. It’s a region of space where gravity is so strong nothing can escape it, not even light. In 2019, a group of telescopes and scientists managed to image the first ever black hole, one at the center of the galaxy M87. That same group of scientists say they’ve got a major announcement related to our galaxy later this week. To talk more about the Event Horizon Telescope and what it may have spotted, we’ll speak with Josh Colwell, Addie Dove and Jim Cooney — physicists at the University of Central Florida and hosts of the podcast Walkabout the Galaxy.

The Mennello Museum of American Art’s latest exhibition, Contemporary Expression: Prints from Flying Horse Editions, went up in January and only has until May 31st before it’s taken down. The show features prints from the City of Orlando’s Public Art Collection, which is the largest and most complete collection of works that were produced by artists in collaboration with the printmakers at UCF’s Flying Horse Editions – a world-class printing program overseen by the University of Central Florida.

Dan Britt, a Pegasus Professor of Physics at UCF, is the university’s second space researcher to win one of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ most distinguished prizes for work that advances space exploration. Florida Space Institute planetary scientists Phil Metzger got the honour in 2018. Britt accepted the honor during the 2022 ASCE Earth & Space Conference held in Denver late last month. The professor says the award reflected the work of all the people who are part of UCF’s Exolith Lab. The lab produces extraterrestrial regolith that mimics the dirt found on Mars, the moon and asteroids. Last year the lab produced and shipped about 38 tons of regolith to researchers around the world working on equipment and projects to establish a sustainable presence beyond Earth.

March 6 kicks off National Nurses Week and AdventHealth is sharing the story of a unique mentorship between one of their nurses, Delaney Postma, and her former patient, Max Jones. The two met after Jones was diagnosed with leukemia at just 19 years old and she was one of the pediatric oncology nurses who treated him and would inspire him to select helping children with cancer as his field. Today, he's enrolled in UCF's College of Nursing.

The first 10 students to earn a master’s degree from a new graduate program at the University of Central Florida have completed their studies and crossed the commencement stage. With its Master of Fine Arts in Theatre, Themed Experience, UCF is one of the first universities to offer a program that includes theme parks and other forms of entertainment, and eight of this semester’s graduating class have already secured a job or internship locally.

It’s a Saturday afternoon as Brian Burns and his dad get ready for Judo class but it’s not just any Judo class. “We developed a judo program for children with autism spectrum disorder. This particular program is actually working with the family so the families actually do judo together,” said Jeanette Garcia, an associate professor in health sciences at UCF. The program was created by researchers at UCF’s College of Health Professions and Sciences.

A new course at the University of Central Florida aims to inspire more students to enter one of Orlando's foundational high-tech industries: optics and photonics. Offered for the first time in the spring 2022 semester, the Introduction to Photonics Engineering Design course gives underclassmen a glimpse at what it would look like to major in photonics. The class may help address the need for technical workers in Central Florida’s optics and photonics cluster, Luminar Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: LAZR) Chief Technology Officer and UCF graduate Jason Eichenholz told Orlando Business Journal. “Early-stage career opportunities are so plentiful for technicians and engineers. You’re guaranteed a job.”