UCF in the News

Every rocket ready to blast off to a new frontier needs an ignition to light the fires, and Barry Miller never expected to have the chance to be that spark for the University of Central Florida. The 54-year-old co-founder and president of Voloridge Investment Management, a Jupiter-based quantitative hedge fund, has supported UCF before, including the creation of the Barry Miller Family First Generation Scholarship, but this is different. This time, he is a central figure in UCF's $3.5 billion "Go For Launch: The Campaign for UCF’s Next Mission" — the largest fundraising campaign UCF has embarked on since its founding in the 1960s. Miller made a $50 million commitment April 15 to the UCF College of Business — the largest in the university’s history — and marked a key moment for the Go For Launch campaign.

University of Central Florida students are excavating artifacts used by Native Americans between 900 and the 1500s near Cape Canaveral's Banana River shoreline. CCAMP, a 10-year partnership between UCF and the military, has documented archaeological sites on the Space Force base.

UCF researchers have uncovered evidence that some movement-related symptoms of Alzheimer's disease may originate outside the brain, which could change how the disease is diagnosed and treated in the future.

Two robot dogs walked across the Walt Disney Theater stage during Theatre UCF's production of Legally Blonde - operated live, in real time, by theater students trained in the university's engineering labs. The moment came during "What You Want," a nine-minute number in which Elle Woods turns her Harvard application into a full-blown performance piece. The idea started at a football game. During last year's UCF Space Game, director Michael D. Jablonski watched the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering's robot dogs cross the field and saw storytelling potential. When Legally Blonde - a show built on defying expectations - became this year's UCF Celebrates the Arts marquee musical, the pairing made sense. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering houses 15 robot dogs, nine of which are in Rakhshan's Laboratory for Interaction of Machine and Brain, where they're used for coursework and research on navigating real-world environments.

A University of Central Florida graduate and investment firm president who credits the school for his financial success will donate $50 million to the institution, the largest philanthropic gift in UCF’s history, the university announced Wednesday. Barry Miller’s donation will grow UCF’s business college, allowing it to hire new faculty with expertise in fields such as artificial intelligence strategy and financial strategy, the university said. “My success was only made possible by the village of people here,” Miller said at the announcement at the business school. “UCF needs the support of a village to achieve our lofty goals. UCF isn’t going to wait for the future. We’re going to build it,” he said. Miller is a 1995 finance graduate and president and co-founder of the Jupiter-based Voloridge investment firm.

After 10 days in space, the Artemis II crew is headed back to Earth. The four astronauts are expected to splash down off the coast of San Diego on Friday evening. Dr. Addie Dove, a planetary scientist and professor of physics at the University of Central Florida, joins Good Day Orlando to talk about the reentry process.

During the Artemis II lunar flyby on Monday, the astronauts onboard took thousands of photos and made geological observations of around 35 targets on the far side of the moon. The astronauts were the first to see the far side of the moon from that perspective, and the data they collected will help planetary scientists here on Earth. At the University of Central Florida, planetary scientist Addie Dove is preparing to send an instrument to the lunar surface as early as 2028. Lunar-VISE aims to understand Gruithuisen Domes – a puzzling geological structure on the moon and a structure that the mission observed. Scientists have no idea how it was formed. Lunar-VISE could unlock that mystery. Dove and her team plan to use images from the Artemis II flyby to maximize the data they can collect.

Artie Moffa has been an active Redditor for 12 years, writing more than 1,000 posts and comments on the platform. None, he says, are as popular as a post he made about — of all things — spreadsheets. A spreadsheet isn’t just for organization. It can also give candidates a sense of control in a job market offering them little of it, says Mindy Shoss, an organizational psychology professor at the University of Central Florida. Spreadsheets can help applicants “better manage uncertainty and maintain a sense of control and structure as they navigate a difficult job search process,” Shoss says. “People have a basic psychological need to feel a sense of certainty and predictability in their lives,” she adds. “When the future becomes opaque and difficult to predict, it’s only natural to try to control what we can.”