The University of Central Florida brings innovation and solutions to some of society’s most pressing problems through research and the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge and avenues for progress.
Wed Aug 26
UCF is offering a free virtual reality environment and augmented reality app to help teachers supplement science lessons and provide some stress relief for those isolated because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maria Harrington, an information scientist and artist, created the applications as a way to advance virtual reality technology, while engaging the public in informal…
Tue Aug 25
To help keep first responders safe, University of Central Florida researchers have developed an artificial intelligence method that not only rapidly and remotely detects the powerful drug fentanyl, but also teaches itself to detect any previously unknown derivatives made in clandestine batches. The method, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports, uses infrared light spectroscopy and…
Sun Aug 23
Longtime work to restore oyster reefs in the Indian River Lagoon has found a new, unusual ally: potato chips. The Coastal and Estuarine Ecology Lab at UCF has been experimenting with various products looking for an effective, biodegradable material for restoration that’s inexpensive. For the past 14 months the group has been testing a mesh…
Fri Aug 21
University of Central Florida researchers are making the cutting-edge field of attosecond science more accessible to researchers from all disciplines. Their method to help open up the field is detailed in a new study published today in the journal Science Advances. An attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second, and the ability to…
Thu Aug 20
UCF hit a milestone in sponsored research funding in 2020, generating $204.5 million by the close of the fiscal year. That’s up from $192.1 million last year and a 40 percent increase since 2016. The upward trend is a result of many factors, including excellent faculty, restructuring the Office of Research and new initiatives that have given…
Tue Aug 18
Graduate students interested in developing social justice research projects have a new funding source through Citizen Science GIS in the Department of Sociology. The new initiative splits proposals into two areas: Amplify Knight Voices and Broaden Community Connections. Amplify Knight Voices funds projects that address “educational or environmental inequality; oppression; anti-racist practices and systems; and/or…
Tue Aug 18
A$170,000 grant award from the National Science Foundation will allow a research team led by Clay Posey, associate professor of management and a cybersecurity expert, to explore the ramifications of home-based work environments on company security. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in March, the country’s business landscape has rapidly shifted in favor of remote work,…
Mon Aug 17
An international team of researchers using data from Arecibo Observatory and the Fermi Space Telescope have discovered what they call a “gamma-ray heartbeat” coming from a cosmic gas cloud. The cloud is in the constellation Aquilla and “beats” in rhythm with a black hole 100 light years away in a microquasar system known as SS…
Thu Aug 13
Engineering Professor Mubarak Shah was recently awarded a $1 million grant to advance his cutting-edge work in the area of machine vision learning (artificial intelligence) and develop a system to thwart attacks on such systems. Shah, the director of UCF’s Center for Research in Computer Vision, and his team work on a variety of research-teaching machines…
Wed Aug 12
Many people have experienced a few nights of bad sleep that resulted in shifting attention spans, impulsive tendencies and hyperactivity the next day—all behaviors resembling ADHD. A new study found that this dynamic may also be linked to increased entrepreneurial behavior. “We’re not advocating depriving yourself of sleep to get ahead,” says Jeff Gish, a…
Tue Aug 11
One of the auxiliary cables that helps support a metal platform in place above the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, broke on Monday (Aug. 10) causing a 100-foot-long gash on the telescope’s reflector dish. Operations at the UCF-managed observatory are stopped until repairs can be made. The break occurred about 2:45 a.m. When the three-inch…
Mon Aug 10
Ayman Abouraddy, a professor in UCF’s College of Optics and Photonics, has been awarded the U.S. Department of Defense’s Newton Award for Transformative Ideas during the COVID-19 Pandemic. “The idea of this new award invokes a comparison to a not too dissimilar situation from ours today that arose in England in 1665,” Abouraddy says. “A plague…
Fri Aug 7
Aresearch team with the University of Central Florida’s Center for Research in Computer Vision recently won a competition to improve computer vision by creating technology that can automatically track behavior in long security videos. The competition, called the Activities in Extended Video Challenge for 2020, was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards…
Thu Aug 6
The Earth has one less asteroid to worry about thanks to the research of an international team of scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Asteroid 2020 NK1 was spotted in early July by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey team at the University of Hawaii. Little was known about the asteroid,…
Thu Aug 6
University of Central Florida researchers have developed a new type of laser beam that doesn’t follow long-held principles about how light refracts and travels. The findings, which were published recently in Nature Photonics, could have huge implications for optical communication and laser technologies. “This new class of laser beams has unique properties that are not shared…
Mon Aug 3
Limbitless Solutions, a non-profit that creates prosthetics arms for children, pivoted its production capabilities during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to help produce face shield components and other needed supplies for local hospitals. The UCF-based organization also worked with national collaborators as it sought ways to extend its reach. Limbitless leaders published a peer-reviewed…
Thu Jul 30
The UCF and Orlando VA Healthcare System research project will examine telehealth for veterans during the pandemic. The team members pictured are, from left, Adam Golden, Andriy Koval, Teresa Carper, Diana Mendez, and Christian King. The switch to remote psychotherapy treatment for veterans diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder has worked for some patients…
Wed Jul 29
COVID-19 infection rates may be peaking in Orange County later this month and trending down toward December, according to new projections by data scientists at the University of Central Florida. The researchers from the Departments of Statistics and Data Science and Computer Science caution, however, that their projections — built using the latest artificial intelligence and deep-learning models —…
Mon Jul 27
Noble metals, such as platinum, palladium, and rhodium are among the most versatile and efficient industrial catalysts for a large number of reactions, ranging from the purification of poisonous pollutants emitted by vehicle engines to the generation of commodity chemicals or clean energy resource, which benefits the environment and our society. But there’s a limited supply of noble…
Thu Jul 23
In September 2018, Amazon released its third generation of the Echo Dot. For millions of consumers, it instantly became yet another connection into their personal smart hubs known as “the internet of things.” Smartphones. Smart speakers. Smart TVs. Smart car entertainment systems. Smart dolls. We didn’t forget you, laptops and tablets. All of these smarts…