UCF in the News

A team of University of Central Florida researchers is helping people who live in downtown Orlando learn more about the air they’re breathing. After waiting out a pandemic delay, the plan is underway to install 100 sensors in neighborhoods across downtown. It took less than 10 minutes for the team to install its most recent solar-powered sensor, one of three installed this week and the 17th so far for the study. “We can make a lot of them so we can basically deploy a lot, and (at) a lot of locations, so we can take a look at the comparison among different places,” said UCF researcher Dr. Haofei Yu. The sensors are now compiling data, and by the end of the year they’ll be sending it to an app that gives residents direct access to the quality of the air where they live. “Then we’ll be able to see, hopefully, some real differences in attitude, in values, and air quality in the city of Orlando,” said UCF researcher Dr. Thomas Bryer.

Execs from Electronic Arts, Luminar, and Stax told Insider that Orlando's big talent pool made it easier for them to recruit in the area. "We have all these great colleges that are literally in our backyard," Suneera Madhani, founder of Orlando-based SME payments platform Stax, said. These include the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida, and Valencia College. Electronic Arts vice-president Daryl Holt said its Orlando studios had more than 850 employees - some from the area, including many UCF graduates, and some who relocated.

A small veteran-owned business at the University of Central Florida Incubator has been working in virtual and augmented reality for military training for the last seven years. Serious Simulations’ latest invention could revolutionize how soldiers train on using and protecting themselves from hand grenades on the battlefield. At the company, workers take real life weapons that our military uses on the battlefield, such as guns and rocket launchers, and integrate electronics and technology so that soldiers can train without getting hurt.

Ravenswood Solutions Inc., a training contractor, in April opened an office and lab in UCF’s Research Park Business Incubator. The company will hire up to 12 people with salaries from $65,000 to $120,000 by summer 2023. The California-based company is the latest simulation and training company to establish a presence in Research Park, the center of Orlando’s $6 billion modeling, simulation and training industry. The company plans to tap into UCF graduates for many of its upcoming jobs.

A new website called Togetherall is helping University of Central Florida students connect to peer support groups around mental health topics from suicide to depression. WMFE spoke with UCF’s Dr. Karen Hofmann about the website and how it’s a free and low-risk way for students to get the help they need this semester.

The University of Central Florida has rolled out a campaign to get students to "Armor up" and get "Vacci-Knighted" — that's a play on the name of UCF's sports teams, the Knights.

Face masks and social distancing are both well-known ways to keep airborne pathogens, like COVID-19, at bay, but University of Central Florida researchers Michael Kinzel and Kareem Ahmed are working on a possible new one — a combination of food products that alters people’s saliva. The concept is based on new work from the researchers showing that food product ingredients can be used to thicken and reduce a person’s saliva, thus decreasing the transmission potential of airborne pathogens. The results were published recently in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

U.S. News & World Report released its annual college and university rankings Monday. The list is one of the highest-regarded rankings in the nation, indicating a high graduation rate, strong faculty resources and student excellence. UCF was ranked No. 148 for overall top schools.

In late 2019, the UCF Business Incubation Program shifted strategy for its Lake Nona Business Incubator to attract more clients in line with the life-sciences industry of Medical City. This resulted in a nearly-full incubator that hosts companies that can directly benefit from the specialized resources UCF and other Lake Nona facilities offer. Plus, many of the companies are growing and creating local jobs. In fact, incubator companies in Lake Nona employed 10 people and generated $834,500 in revenue in fiscal year 2019, which leaped to 55 employees and $2.9 million in revenue in fiscal year 2021.