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College of Sciences

Using Technology to Help Reduce Substance Addiction

UCF clinical psychologist and Professor Lidia Meshesha works tirelessly to help improve the lives of people afflicted by addiction. She knows from previous studies, that many people relapse after treatment. “I have seen too many patients who struggle with addiction, and despite going to treatment and reporting that they don’t want to use alcohol or…

Student Research Week: Preserving History Through Field Work and Technology

Alexander Nalewaik ’21 enrolled at UCF as an undergraduate with one thing in mind. He wanted to merge his love of history, people and the outdoors into a major that would lead to a great career. Fast forward a few years and the anthropology alum is now pursuing a master’s degree in the field while completing research that not only…

Helping Save Endangered Giraffes from Extinction with the Power of Math

UCF graduate student Huntir Bass, who is pursuing a master’s degree in math, knows the power of math to solve problems. And she’ll be presenting about the project at UCF’s annual Student Scholar Symposium, the cornerstone of Student Research Week. “Since I was little, I have always gravitated towards math,” says the Mobile, Alabama, native. “I…

Knights Do That: Cultivating Positive Workplace Well-being

In episode 20 — the sixth of season two of  Knights Do That  — we speak with Mindy Shoss, an associate professor of psychology. She shares her research and expertise when it comes to workplace well-being and advice on how we can improve our communication in the workplace, what companies can do to have the…

Fresh Take on Quantum Computing Earns UCF Graduate Student Top Prize

Afresh take on quantum computing recently earned Physics Ph.D. student Eric D. Switzer an industry prize at an annual symposium. Switzer, advised by Pegasus Professor and UCF Trustee Chair Professor Talat S. Rahman, Ph.D., walked away with the IBM-Zerner Graduate Student Award at the Sanibel Symposium based on a poster he presented exploring the use…

PHOTOS: Knights Celebrate World Wildlife Day

UCF Knights conduct research around the globe to help understand and conserve wildlife. To celebrate World Wildlife Day, launched on March 3 by the United Nations in 1973 to help raise awareness about how people benefit from “fauna and flora,” we asked our Knights and our faculty to share some pictures from their field work. The…

UCF Researcher to Collaborate with MIT on DARPA Night-vision Project

The four-year project is a collaboration between the laboratory of Michael Leuenberger at UCF and the laboratory of Dirk R. Englund ˙at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It’s funded by a $1.1 million-dollar grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). “The goggles that currently exist in the field are too heavy and bulky,” says Leuenberger.…

Florida Sea Turtles Get a Boost with Gift of New Boat

Thanks to a trio of donors with a passion for supporting the state’s marine life , the new boat debuting this spring replaces a 1976 craft reaching the end of its lifespan. “I always joke our bimonthly team building exercise is fixing something on the boats,” says Kate Mansfield, an associate professor and director of…

UCF Joins Program to Strengthen Data-based Research at Minority-serving Institutions

UCF was recently tapped to participate in a national training program that strengthens the capacity for data-based research among historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic serving institutions (HSIs). This initiative builds evidence-based research through data analysis to promote the success of Black and Latino students in postsecondary education. The Leveraging Big Data to…

Pushing the Boundaries

Kathleen Loftin ’89 ’00MS ’09PhD is in her happy place on a Saturday morning: pulling weeds in her garden. The work is peaceful, filthy, and as down to earth as you can possibly be. “Papayas grow without much effort,” Loftin says, sounding more like a wonder-struck gardener than the center chief technologist at Kennedy Space Center.…

UCF Student Nanotech Team Designs Space Suit Material for NASA Competition

Agroup of six University of Central Florida students and alums from a range of fields designed and won the Best Technical Poster award as finalists in NASA’s recent Lunar Dust Challenge. They received the honor after NASA’s 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge Virtual Forum in November 2021. As part of NASA’s BIG…

Two Knights Awarded 2022 Foreign Affairs Fellowships

For the first time ever, two individuals with UCF affiliations have been awarded the Charles B. Rangel Graduate Fellowship and the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship in the same year. These are both highly coveted fellowships that give the recipients the opportunity to work as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of…

New Funding Will Help UCF Researcher Develop Nanotech to Detect Animal-borne Diseases

AUniversity of Central Florida researcher will be leading a new project to use nanotechnology to advance research in the detection and mitigation of emerging animal-borne infectious diseases. The project is funded by a $50,000 grant from national philanthropic foundation Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The funding is part of…

UCF Research in 60 Seconds: Understanding the Impact of Diversity

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…

4 UCF Researchers Named as Highly Cited Researchers for 2021

Four University of Central Florida researchers have been named highly cited researchers in their field for 2021 by analytics company Clarivate, based on data from Web of Science. The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade.…