UCF in the News

The health care industry has integrated AI to enhance diagnostics and efficiency. Human oversight remains crucial for patient safety and data security. Over 900 AI tools have been approved by the FDA for medical use. Data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) tools are changing the way health care workers help patients. Orlando Business Journal spoke with health care professionals at Nemours, Orlando Health, AdventHealth, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and University of Central Florida about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats surrounding AI in health care. AI tools can't be relied upon alone to replace health care professionals' medical knowledge and experience, since any given decision could be the difference between life and death. "The health care provider is the trained content expert,” said Richard Zraick, a speech language pathologist and founding director of the University of Central Florida's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. “They have the knowledge, the expertise and the clinical experience to know what it is and what questions they're supposed to ask, and they know if the answers they're getting [from AI] make sense or not for an individual patient, because health care is highly individualized.” Zraick sees the importance of focusing on personalized medicine regularly while working with speech-impaired patients. AI is being used to analyze speech patterns and validate what he’s hearing with his own ears. The emergence of data-driven AI in health care has the potential to energize a new generation of aspiring doctors, physicians and nurses, and perhaps more importantly, empower patients to have more access and understanding of their own care. “We are living in this exciting age where we are seeing a lot of successful stories with how AI is able to change our daily lives, but in health care it’s only scratching the surface,” said Chen Chen, an associate professor at UCF’s Center for Research in Computer Vision. “Nurse practitioners spend a lot of time charting at the nursing station, so these AI tools can enhance their efficiency so they can spend more time with the patients.”

Cursive is a style of writing where the letters and characters are connected. It requires a level of penmanship and knowledge to interpret and execute the fluidity of the words. Some of the most important historic documents like the Declaration of Independence are written in it. This morning, a Florida House Education committee approved and advanced a bill requiring public school students learn and be proficient in cursive by the end of fifth grade. Currently, the state requires cursive instruction but there is no testing proving comprehension. The bill sponsor, Republican Toby Overdorf, joins Engage to talk about why this is a priority for him during the legislative session. Enrique Puig, Director of the Morgridge International Reading Center at UCF, joins Engage to talk about the developmental benefits of learning cursive. He also has experience teaching in K-12 classrooms and literary coaching.

The University of Central Florida’s online English program can be quite the bargain for students who live in the Sunshine State, boasting in-state tuition of just under $180 per credit. More than 90% of the UCF student body stays enrolled between their first and second years, and nearly 80% of students graduate. Students in this program can choose from technical communication, literature or creative writing tracks, which may appeal to English majors with career aspirations in one of these three areas.

On the heels of the highest-ranked series win in program history over the No. 4 Arizona Wildcats on the road over the weekend, the UCF softball team has been recognized for its efforts. The squad, after receiving votes in the poll two weeks ago, has jumped into Softball America’s week six top 25 poll at No. 25 in the nation.

Local innovator and entrepreneur Jason Eichenholz is back at it. The co-founder of Luminar Technologies and founder of the Jonathan’s Landing nonprofit teamed with University of Central Florida Professor Rodrigo Amezcua Correa to secure $4.6 million in pre-seed funding for their Relativity Networks stealth startup, the company announced Feb. 11. Relativity Networks, a next-generation fiber-optics company, uses patent-pending hollow core fiber (HCF) cables to “change the speed of light” and transform how and where data centers can grow in an emerging world of cloud computing and artificial intelligence. “We're solving for an existential threat in the AI and data center space, which is a lack of power,” Eichenholz told Orlando Business Journal. Relativity Networks was formed in late 2023 through funding from Eichenholz, who is a product of UCF’s College of Optics and Photonics. The technology is licensed exclusively through the UCF Research Foundation. Eichenholz was coaching and mentoring other startups at UCF when Amezcua Correa approached him about his hollow core fiber creation. Eichenholz realized it was similar to what he’d written about 20 years earlier, and once he truly understood the opportunity, he decided, “I can't sit this one out. This is too great.” Winston Schoenfeld, vice president for research and innovation at UCF, said in a prepared statement that the technology “represents the next revolution in optical networking” and the breakthrough “demonstrates a decade of dedicated research by our team.”