UCF in the News

For the fifth straight season, UCF will wear space-themed uniforms, and this year the program will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program’s first flight when the Knights take on Memphis this Friday night. “I think it’s cool,” Knights coach Gus Malzahn said. “I think it’s really good. I think recruits love it. I know our players love it. When the players love it and recruits love it, I love it.”

UCF is joining LaserNetUS, a consortium of the nation’s best large laser facilities started by the Department of Energy as a part of a broader strategy to boost the nation’s standing in intense laser science. The invitation to join LaserNetUS will expand UCF’s capabilities in the area of attosecond science, which aims to study and control the motion of electrons and will open UCF laser facilities to external users. Membership also allows the team to expand into the bourgeoning area of relativistic laser-plasma interactions, in which electrons and other particles are driven to speeds close to the speed of light.

UCF physicist and geologist Dan Britt is among the scientists ready to analyze data from the Lucy mission after its blast off from the Space Coast on Saturday. This will be the fourth NASA mission for Britt, who in 2012 invented a way for the Mars rover to beam back pictures in vibrant color. This time, he helps lead the science team to study what is collected from Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids on this first trip to this part of the solar system.

Could eye tracking and reading facial expressions be the future of virtual doctor appointments? Researcher and University of Central Florida professor Roger Azevedo thinks so. He is leading a new project at UCF, set to start in January, to better study how artificial intelligence (AI) can help with Telehealth, an industry that’s grown exponentially especially since the pandemic started.

University of Central Florida researchers have found a novel genetic marker to discriminate between strains of a common bacteria in coastal waters that can cause deadly disease to humans and strains that don’t make people sick. The findings, published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focus on Vibrio vulnificus, a potentially deadly bacteria that can enter the bloodstream via scratches and other open wounds. The researchers say their findings can help to predict the conditions that set the stage for future outbreaks from other pathogens.

It's been a busy year for the University of Central Florida's business incubators. UCF's Business Incubation Program in the past 13 months lured at least six new-to-market companies through its soft-landing program, which is aimed at out-of-state and international firms. These firms bring Central Florida the possibility of new high-wage jobs and draw cutting-edge technology closer to potential local customers and partners. "It was like the floodgates opened," said Carol Ann Dykes Logue, UCF’s Innovation Districts and Incubation Program director of programs and operations. "As things began to open up, they were chomping at the bit to pull the trigger."

Thomas Wahl, a UCF assistant professor and civil engineer, heads the Coastal Risks and Engineering (CoRE) Lab, which studies things like coastal engineering design concepts, sustainability for humans in coastal zones and climate adaptation. Last month, he joined a team of researchers backed by a $20 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation to develop a Megalopoitan Coastal Transformation Hub, which is designed to “create climate-resilient decision-making frameworks to equitably support coastal communities.”

When athletics director Terry Mohajir and president Alexander Cartwright stood in front of a podium posing for photos with a Big 12 Conference logo behind them celebrating the move to a Power Five conference, someone monumental in helping UCF reach this point was missing from the festivities. Sitting in his Wisconsin home more than 1,000 miles away from Orlando, former UCF president John Hitt, 80, felt proud of his university on a historic day. The Knights had finally done it.

Few universities have more experience with the hybrid approach than the University of Central Florida, which began experimenting with blended and online classes in the 1990s, and where 90% of the university’s 59,000 undergraduates take such classes today. UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning has played a vital role in this transformation, serving as a clearinghouse for online learning strategies and practices and as a hub of training for professors.