UCF in the News

If anyone was wondering whether or not UCF knows how to bring the energy, their question should be answered now. This is the first time this pre-game show has been to the state of Florida ever, and they picked a great place to make their Florida debut. Even though attendance can't be fully counted, it has been announced that the estimated attendance for Big Noon Kickoff in Orlando is the largest they have ever had in the show's history. UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir made the announcement on X (formally known as Twitter). The UCF crowd was ready nice and early this morning, even after a Category 4 hurricane, Hurricane Helene ravaged the start of Florida the two days before. If there is one thing that UCF has, it is spirit for their athletics program. Famous DJ Khaled made an appearance with Fat Joe for live performances in the middle of Memory Mall in the heart of UCF's campus. Khaled could be the hype of the crowd as he chose to even jump into the crowd and crowd surf, but that didn't last long, as security was there to break it up.

The University of Central Florida on Sept. 24 hit a key construction milestone for its Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion. The college brought in representatives from AdventHealth, Orlando Health, Nemours Children's Health, Dr. Phillips Inc. and more to sign a beam that will be put in the $68 million, 90,000-square-foot building. Construction is more than 40% complete on the facility, which the college expects to occupy late next summer ahead of the 2025-26 academic year. UCF College of Nursing Dean Mary Lou Sole told Orlando Business Journal the program already has added 100 students and is planning how it can accommodate those students and more at the new building. The expanded building will allow the school to graduate 150 more nurses per year than the roughly 260 it averages now. "The Central Florida area continues to grow, so it will be a continuous job to address as all the new health care facilities are opening," Sole said.

On Sept. 9 and 10, scientists and engineers tested NASA's LEMS (Lunar Environment Monitoring Station) instrument suite in a "sandbox" of simulated moon regolith at the Florida Space Institute's Exolith Lab at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Lunar regolith is a dusty, soil-like material that coats the moon's surface, and researchers wanted to observe how the material would interact with LEMS's hardware, which is being developed to fly to the moon with Artemis III astronauts in late 2026. Designed and built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, LEMS is one of three science payloads chosen for development for Artemis III, which will be the first mission to land astronauts on the lunar surface since 1972.

Migratory animals may navigate using Earth’s magnetic fields, potentially aided by magnetic bacteria living inside them. Robert Fitak and his team have compiled a vast DNA database to investigate the presence of these bacteria in animals, focusing on their possible role in aiding navigation, especially in sea turtles. The remarkable navigation and route-recalling abilities of migratory animals may stem not only from their sensitivity to Earth’s magnetic fields but also from a potential interaction with magnetic bacteria living within them. The relationship between these magnetic bacteria and the animals they reside in is not yet fully understood, but UCF Department of Biology Assistant Professor Robert Fitak recently compiled a database of animal DNA that houses hundreds of millions of sequences showing the presence of various types of magnetic bacteria to use as a tool in his pursuit to learn more.

Could things get any worse for Boeing? Last week, the company’s Starliner spacecraft landed in New Mexico, having made its way home from the International Space Station without its crew. Left behind are two astronauts unexpectedly stuck aboard the ISS for months thanks to Boeing’s failure. They will have to wait to be rescued by Boeing’s archnemesis, SpaceX. “The companies have some bad feelings toward each other, and their own sets of fans have bad feelings toward each other, and so then NASA, in a sense, is kind of caught in the middle,” said Philip Metzger of the University of Central Florida, who worked at NASA on human space flight programs for over a decade. he Starliner would probably have been safe to fly, most observers seemed to agree at the time, but why take the risk? With the SpaceX Dragon, there was a known safe alternative. “In the past, they may have gone ahead and flown it,” Metzger said. And if SpaceX were running its own test flight that experienced similar problems and was in charge of decision-making, he said, it might have chosen to go ahead with the flight, “because SpaceX doesn’t seem to be as cautious as Boeing or NASA.”

Dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our brains, not only regulates our emotions but also serves as a biomarker for the screening of certain cancers and other neurological conditions. University of Central Florida researchers, led by UCF NanoScience Technology Center Professor Debashis Chanda, have developed an integrated optical sensor capable of detecting dopamine directly from an unprocessed blood sample.

It couldn’t be clearer at this point that the US labor market is cooling. Even though the unemployment rate edged lower last month to 4.2%, joblessness is still hovering near highs not seen since the fall of 2021. On top of that, employers have hired significantly fewer workers in recent months compared to prior years and the number of job openings fell in July to the lowest level since January 2021, according to Labor Department data. Holding off on hiring more workers until after the election is “a rational decision,” said Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida. “When there’s more clarity about the future,” he said, “businesses are more confident in making these kinds of decisions.”

UCF has unveiled new renderings of the $88 million expansion of the Roth Tower attached to FBC Mortgage Stadium, along with more details for its premium seating options. “We are creating the most affordable premium experience in all of college athletics with this new tower,” UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir told the Sentinel. The project will expand the existing structure by approximately 58,000 square feet, with approximately 15,000 square feet dedicated to club space. This includes 42% more club seating, loge suites with seating, 28 luxury suites and 34 new outdoor sky suites. “It’s going to be a one-of-a-kind tower, and it’s being built and utilized with the intent of being used other than the seven times we have home football games a year,” said Mohajir. “We wanted this to be a year-round opportunity for people to use this.”

SpaceX's astronauts will be the first non-government astronauts to attempt a spacewalk as part of the Polaris Dawn mission. The mission will also test SpaceX's new, slimmer spacesuit, and a Crew Dragon vehicle that was modified so it can open its hatch door in the vacuum of space, meaning it does not require an airlock. The crew will use an ultrasound device to monitor any bubble formation, one of many tools to be used in the mission to inform dozens of scientific experiments, providing researchers a rare peek into how astronauts might fare on the moon's surface or elsewhere in deep space. "It gives us a very unique opportunity to test these vehicles in such a very unique environment," said Emmanuel Urquieta, vice chair for aerospace medicine at the University of Central Florida's internal medicine department.