UCF in the News

How does space travel affect the human body? A team of doctors from the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine is working to find those answers when the first four civilians travel to the International Space Station on Friday. Axiom and SpaceX's first all-private crew will be part of a study that's looking into how a trip into orbit affects your eyes and your brain. "Depending on what we're able to see even on this first mission, it might influence change in terms of what NASA does for pre- and post-astronaut travel to see the things that they screen for and look for," ophthalmologist and assistant professor of medicine at UCF Dr. Mehul Patel said.

Swarming across an archaeological pit, University of Central Florida students wielding hand tools are carefully unearthing a long-hidden Ais Native American gathering place near the Banana River — where prehistoric stone spear points date back to 6,000 years old. "We've found lots of these shell clusters that were in these very centralized kind of pockets, that almost look like (they) would have been maybe an eating area," said Amanda Groff, UCF senior lecturer of anthropology, standing at the dig site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The Small Business Institute, the premier provider of professional development for those engaged in experiential student team consulting and related entrepreneurship education, research and activities and the link between business, education and community, recently announced that a student team from the University of Central Florida’s College of Business Administration and College of Engineering was a winner in its annual Experiential Learning Project of the Year competition, taking 1st Place in the 2021-22 ‘Graduate Comprehensive’ category.

Inflation is hitting the country hard and some UCF students are having to make the hard choice between school supplies and food. UCF says the number of students coming in has doubled this semester – more than 200 students at day. The Knights Helping Knights Pantry is just one of the student support areas the university is raising money for today. UCF hopes to get more donations today to keep this pantry stocked.

Fifteen minutes after South Carolina won the NCAA women’s basketball championship Sunday night, Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley sent a text to Sytia Messer. An hour before the title game between South Carolina and UConn tipped, Messer had been named the next head coach of UCF women’s basketball. “Dawn texted ‘Congratulations. What a great opportunity. What a great university. Go get it done.’ She’s definitely someone I’m going to lean on,” Messer said. “I want us to win on the court, in the classroom and in the community,” Messer said. “We’re going to do those things.”

Although tourism is Orlando's biggest economic driver, UCF's work in shaping the Rosen School of Hospitality Management to train workers in the tourism sector for large employers like Disney and Universal Orlando Resort also led it to apply that approach to emerging tech fields like gaming, UCF President Alexander Cartwright said last week during a roundtable discussion with education leaders. Cartwright said, "Artificial intelligence, modeling and simulation, all are things we see as the next big thing for the region. We’re strong in those areas, but I see even more opportunity, and what we want to do is make sure we can provide the workforce that is needed for that."

Three University of Central Florida researchers were awarded millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Defense for the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. The research projects are aimed at facilitating the growth of newly emerging technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense. The awards will support projects that range from advancing hypersonic propulsion to improving semiconductor performance, and will fund the work for the next five years, UCF said. The recipients are Kareem Ahmed, UCF mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor; Tania Roy, UCF nanoscience technology center assistant professor; and Kevin Coffey, UCF materials science and engineering professor.

UCF Lake Nona Medical Center professors are collaborating with Israeli researchers to better understand the human body in a microgravity environment by studying the four space participants, three of which paid for the flight and one of which is a former NASA astronaut. The quartet are set to blast off Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center hitching a ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, which has been contracted by Axiom Space making its first trip to the ISS on a 10-day mission. The studies could lead to huge leaps in space travel and medicinal knowledge bases, but for UCF the studies open an even larger opportunity for research and a nexus between its medical school and the Space Coast.

The University of Central Florida was recently awarded a grant worth $4.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to determine if a pre-packaged pod is an effective method to deploy very efficient heating, cooling and water heating systems to thousands of homes. The DOE awarded $32 million to seven teams that will manage 30 demonstration projects nationwide. Finding effective ways to retrofit existing and older buildings to be more energy efficient is critical considering there are 130 million buildings in the United States today and about 75% of them are expected to still be standing in 2050, according to the DOE.