UCF in the News

Even the most successful space missions initially encounter snafus which can keep their project managers up all night. And the European Space Agency's Euclid mission is no exception. Roughly one month after its launch this past July, the team realized that the spacecraft had issues. Ones that could jeopardize Euclid’s forthcoming wide-field survey to finally understand the cosmos’ unseen dark energy and dark matter. Although Euclid was not designed to study asteroids, it is expected observe more than 150,000 of them as foreground objects in its images. This will produce a gold mine of data on asteroids; we will characterize smaller and more distant asteroids than possible from ground-based telescopes, Humberto Campins, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, told me via email.

The University of Central Florida has grown its prominence in research as it prepares for its football team to play the latest iteration of the Space Game. UCF's football team will play Oklahoma State on Nov. 11, the seventh installment of the game which includes special Citronaut uniforms and promotes the school's research and more. The school's ties extend from when it was founded in 1963 to provide the workforce for activity on Florida's Space Coast, to now, where rockets from Launch Pad 39A line up with FBC Mortgage Stadium's 50-yard line.

Less ink has been spilled in the quest for the Holy Grail than a more elusive prize: the perfect Thanksgiving turkey. Every year, magazines and newspapers and websites — including, of course, The Washington Post — offer up the latest and greatest takes on the recipes and techniques that will produce for the reader willing to follow along the bronzed, juicy, flavorful centerpiece of their holiday table that they’ve been dreaming of. “There’s a saying in food media that every Thanksgiving is a cook’s first turkey,” says Kim Voss, a University of Central Florida professor who studies the history of food journalism. “But it’s another cook’s 20th — so the question is how do you balance out the need for the basics and the fact that someone has been cooking for so long, it’s like ‘give me something new.’”

Dr. Phillips Charities wants to be the naming rights sponsor for the University of Central Florida's Lake Nona College of Nursing building in east Orlando. The college's board of trustees will consider on Nov. 16 the Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion name for the 90,000-square-foot, $68 million-plus facility at its current Lake Nona Academic Health Sciences campus. The Orlando nonprofit donated more than $10 million for the project to enable UCF to help meet the region's nursing shortage. "Being able to educate more nurses will help our local partner hospitals in Orlando Health and AdventHealth fill critical positions and provide the best care possible for their patients and our community," Ken D. Robinson, president and CEO of Dr. Phillips Charities, told Orlando Business Journal. He added that the organization's history with UCF goes back to the university's inception when Howard Phillips was one of the guarantors for UCF to be created.

The UCF Themed Experience Graduate programs are fortunate to be in the international hub of the themed entertainment industry (Orlando). We have drawn on this local industry leadership resource to create an exceptional UCF Themed Experience Advisory Council. Here, several members of that Council share their thoughts on the future of themed experience and entertainment education.

Mental health wellness is a critical issue for many in Central Florida — including veterans. The unique experiences and challenges faced by veterans can have a significant impact on their mental well-being. Our diverse male and female veteran population ranges from WWII age to those recently discharged. Often, a veteran's mental health is affected by the trauma they may have experienced during active duty. The University of Central Florida's “UCF Restores” program addresses PTSD in veterans, first responders and other survivors of trauma.

Each time you take a sip of water, you’re imbibing liquid that, in all likelihood, is up to 4.5 billion years old. Earth is awash in a life-sustaining substance about as ancient as the planet itself. Astrophysicists don’t completely know where the stuff came from, but circumstantial evidence suggests that water-containing meteorites might have pummeled an infant Earth. Those rocky showers would have helped transform a bone-dry place into a unique wet world. When the solar system first came together, some of the young planets were too hot for water. “Earth and Mars should have formed extremely dry,” says Humberto Campins, an asteroid expert at the University of Central Florida—due to their locations in the solar system’s frost line. "The pieces of the puzzle are not clear," says Campins, who is a member of the team that probed Bennu's contents. But he points to one major clue that "gives us an idea of where the water may be coming from": the type of hydrogen that flows through our aquatic systems.

A man out to dinner with his daughters, meeting his grandchild for the first time, suddenly collapsed. Luckily, a group of a physician from HCA Florida Osceola Hospital and three UCF-HCA Healthcare residents were dining nearby and rushed over to help. Together, they administered CPR and care until paramedics arrived. And when he arrived at the hospital, he ended up being assigned to Dr. Suhail Saad-Omer, who helped him at the scene.

If you’re feeling unmotivated—or even unwell—at work right now, you’re hardly alone. What you’re feeling is valid, as your newsfeeds and social feeds are likely filled with atrocious and graphic updates around war, terrorism, and gun violence. Toggling from a breaking news story to a non-urgent work email can be emotionally distressing, to say the least. “Excessive news consumption, especially when it involves so much negativity and repeated crises, is related to feelings of anxiety, fear, despair, anger, and disgust,” says Chrysalis Wright, psychologist and associate lecturer at the University of Central Florida. “These feelings can take a toll on us and our well-being, but there are things we can do about it.” We asked mental health experts what self-care can look like, both for people on the job and during a mental health day.