Tue Aug 23
Dedicated to preserving ocean life at every scale, UCF doctoral candidate Ashley Reaume is working to create an efficient and cost-effective “bioassessment toolkit” that can be used to evaluate the impact of water quality on plankton communities. “Both plankton and estuaries play important roles in sustaining human life, providing us with ecosystem services like nutrient…
Wed Aug 10
Traveling to Hopkins Village, Belize, feels like a homecoming for Citizen Science GIS after six years of research and community work. Each summer brings a surprise, though. A new degree of urgency was injected into this year’s projects when Associate Professor Timothy Hawthorne, Ph.D., and the student team saw just how badly the beach had…
Fri Aug 5
Doctorate graduates were given a warm and personal send-off Thursday in a longstanding College of Sciences tradition. Remarks by Dean Maggy Tomova, Ph.D., were followed by individual recognition of the Summer ’22 graduates in attendance. A toast sent them forward into their next milestones, which varied from academia to postdoctoral research and national laboratories. Click here for…
Fri Jul 29
Getting a tenure-track faculty position at a university has become harder, but several UCF recent graduates are beating the odds. For many students, an academic position is the goal. For others, it’s industry. Getting into academia is challenging. The American Association of University Professors reports tenured faculty positions have declined to approximately only 21% of…
Mon Jul 18
Asking the right questions is one of the key things Sandra Montenegro has taken from the Survey Certificate Program offered by the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. The I/O psychology master’s student is studying ways to mitigate the emotional toll of bi-vocational church ministers. Often that stress stems from clergy switching between roles of pastor,…
Mon Jul 18
A new research article on molecular devices is making its way to publication in one of the top five scientific journals in the world. The research article was published on the Advanced Materials website and acknowledges the work by Postdoctoral Associate Ran Liu, Ph.D. Physics and Pegsus Professor Enrique del Barco, Ph.D. Physics. Their research aims to find an…
Wed Jul 13
UCF physics graduate student Olga Harrington Pinto counted down the minutes until today. She is one of eight UCF researchers and one alumna who will be using the world’s mightiest space telescope — the James Webb Space Telescope. This morning, the telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data were released during a televised broadcast from…
Tue Jul 12
Catherine Millwater has been dreaming of space long before arriving at UCF. In 2018, the eager 17-year-old reached out to UCF’s Planetary Sciences Group in hopes they had room for a high school student willing to learn how to be a researcher. Spoiler alert: They did. Millwater, who expects to graduate from UCF in May…
Tue Jun 28
In April 2022, the India Center hosted a discussion on the COVID-19 pandemic response in India and the U.S. Associate Professor Varadraj Gurupur, Ph.D., from UCF’s School of Global Health Management and Informatics led a panel discussion with Dr. Anuradha Pichumani, executive director of the Sree Renga Hospital, and Dr. Amitha Marla, medical administrator of…
Tue Jun 28
When asteroid 2019 OK suddenly appeared barreling toward Earth on July 25, 2019, Luisa Fernanda Zambrano-Marin and the team at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico jumped into action. After getting an alert, the radar scientists zoned in on the asteroid, which was coming from Earth’s blind spot — solar opposition. Zambrano-Marin and the team…
Wed Jun 22
In June, at least five asteroids — some as large as a Boeing 747 — will buzz by Earth, coming as close as 431,000 miles from the planet. Asteroids are always moving through our solar system. Although none of them pose a serious threat to Earth now, they could in the future. As a civilization…
Wed Jun 15
UCF RESTORES has received a $1.4 million First Responder Regional Support Grant from the Florida Department of Children and Families to expand its nationally recognized peer support and suicide prevention training for first responders in a 12-county region in Central Florida. The award establishes UCF RESTORES — a leading nonprofit clinical research center and trauma…
Mon Jun 13
A University of Central Florida researcher has been selected for an Early Career Award by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to investigate elusive chemical compounds that could help mitigate the impact of combustion on climate change. The researcher, Denisia Popolan-Vaida, will receive $800,000 for a period of five years to support her research. The…
Wed Jun 8
A UCF Trustee Chair Professor and Pegasus Professor in physics was recognized with the American Vacuum Society (AVS) Recognition for Excellence in Mentoring Award for guiding the next generation of scientists and engineers. Talat Rahman, Ph.D. was selected to receive the AVS award to honor her work in mentoring. Rahman was recognized for helping underrepresented groups and…
Tue Jun 7
The time-consuming process of piecing together broken pottery vessels found during archaeological excavations is getting a boost from artificial intelligence. Pottery provides key insights into how ancient people lived, but most archaeological sites uncover pottery in broken sherds. To use this evidence to its full potential requires piecing them back together like a jigsaw puzzle…
Tue Jun 7
Advocating for inclusion and researching civil-military relations are just a few of the things Salah Ben Hammou does in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. The Security Students Ph.D. student became interested in politics at the age of 14 after observing the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests in the 2010s that spread…
Tue Jun 7
One of Florida’s most precious resources is its water from the aquifer to the 8,436 miles of coastline, boarded by the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida, and the Atlantic Ocean. Water is also a major player in the state’s economy, contributing $56 billion to the economy and generating 900,000 jobs according to a…
Fri Jun 3
NASA has tapped UCF’s dynamic duo, planetary scientists Kerri Donaldson Hanna and Adrienne Dove, to lead a $35 million science mission that will land a spacecraft on a part of the moon never visited before — the Gruithuisen Domes. The domes, located in the western portion of the Imbrium basin rim, remain a mystery to…
Tue May 31
Whether it’s solving the world’s biggest problems or investigating the potential of novel discoveries, researchers at UCF are on the edge scientific breakthroughs that aim to make an impact. Through the Research in 60 Seconds series, student and faculty researchers condense their complex studies into bite-sized summaries so you can know how and why Knights plan…
