Teens routinely encounter online risks, such as sexual solicitations, cyberbullying and explicit material, but research shows that the negative effects of such exposure appear to be temporary, vanishing for most teens in less than a week.
A new study from the University of Central Florida, Pennsylvania State and Ohio State found that typical teens seem to be resilient and cope with most online risks, moving beyond the temporary negative impacts quickly.
The researchers conducted a web-based diary study of 68 teens. They chronicled the teens’ online experiences for eight weeks and used pre-validated psychological scales to assess how negative online experiences impacted teens’ emotional state and well-being. While they found that teens reported more negative emotions during the weeks they experienced cyberbullying and explicit content, these effects were gone only a week later. The findings will be presented at the 2018 conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing next year.
“I think if there is a message here, it is that teens are being exposed a lot, but they bounce back and show resiliency,” said Bridget McHugh, who worked on the study while a Ph.D student at UCF and is now a leadership development consultant at Ohio State University. “We’re not exactly sure how they are learning the coping skills, but they are and that’s good news.”
McHugh said coping may be happening through other online interactions with friends or through support from social media communities.
Pamela Wisniewski, a computer science assistant professor at UCF in Orlando, and co-author of the study, concluded that more research needs to be conducted into how teens learn to cope in the constantly changing social media world.
“I know parents are afraid of all the dangers out there, especially because teens seem to be practically tethered to the internet with their mobile devices,” she said. “But we may be over problematizing online risks and creating another stressor for teens and parents. What we should be looking at is, what does this all mean for the everyday teen?”
“We absolutely acknowledge there are cases where teens experience severe online risks, such as cyberbullying, that lead to long-term negative outcomes, like committing suicide,” Wisniewski said. “These are terrible, but they are also extreme cases. The good news is that in our study, we found that these extreme scenarios aren’t the average teen experience.”
She suggests parents help their children learn to manage risk, and that can’t happen if there isn’t open communication. But that’s a challenge when it comes to the topic of online activity. In another study, Wisniewski found that teens don’t communicate about all the risks they encounter online because parents tend to overreact.
Wisniewski has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and joined UCF in 2015. Her research on adolescent online safety has won best paper awards (top 1%) and best paper honorable mentions (top 5%) at premier conferences in her field, as well as being featured by Science Daily, Forbes and NPR.
McHugh earned her Ph.D from University of Central Florida in 2016. Her work focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of social media and other forms of digital communication among adolescents and young professionals.
This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-1018302. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.
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UCF Part of National Team Helping Protect Infrastructure from Future Hurricanes
The simple words spoken by an elderly woman in Cape Coral are as an example of why UCF engineering Assistant Professor Luis Arboleda-Monsalve works so hard to make a difference in his profession, which in turn has a direct impact on hurricane readiness.
“She told us to make sure to do something good with the report,” said the structural and geotechnical engineer. “That’s what we are doing, issuing a set of recommendations about building codes and standards so we not only help infrastructure be more resistant, but also more resilient so that after the next disaster, people can return to their normal lives as quickly as possible.”
The woman was one of hundreds in Cape Coral who saw the canal seawalls behind their homes collapse under the brunt of Hurricane Irma last month. These walls help keep the canals from flooding homes, protect them from the wave impact, and keep the soil under the homes stable.
Arboleda-Monsalve was one of three researchers who traveled from Cape Coral to Everglades City and from Miami to Key West taking inventory of geotechnical and infrastructure damage caused by Hurricane Irma’s storm surge, waves and subsequent flooding.
Arboleda-Monsalve is part of the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association, a National Science Foundation-funded group based at the University of California at Berkeley. The volunteer organization dispatches experts in civil engineering to areas hit by natural disasters. GEER’s mission is to turn disaster into knowledge that can be used for future improvement of engineering standards and practices nationwide. Reports with observations and recommendations are posted to the GEER website, creating a national, centralized hub of peer-reviewed post-storm technical reports that can help guide the community to create, improve or modify construction practices and codes.
GEER had teams in Texas after Hurricane Harvey, in Florida after Hurricane Irma, and in Mexico after a recent 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The GEER teams arrive after emergency personnel have assembled so they don’t get in the way of distributing services to people who need it.
Two teams worked in Florida following Irma. Arboleda-Monsalve’s team included Professor Nina Stark from Virginia Tech and Professor Inthuorn Sasanakul from the University of South Carolina. They focused on geotechnical damage on bridges, roads, canals and shoreline damage from hurricane-related erosion in the west and south side of Florida. Another team focused on the north and east part of the state. A different team of structural engineers handled damage caused by wind and focused on other parts of the state affected by the hurricane.
The team collected more than 1,500 photos, and the U.S. Geological Survey, NSF, Florida Division of Emergency Management and other agencies helped them gain access to areas and target the visit to the most affected areas in the state.
“We saw a lot of seawall collapses, especially the older seawalls. The newer ones did their job,” Arboleda-Monsalve said. “Riprap, typically used to prevent erosion under bridges and coastline, did help. We also saw a lot of exposed foundations and some areas decimated. I wasn’t prepared for the human toll.”
The first Irma report was uploaded to the GEER website last week. Reports about the earthquake in Mexico and other natural disasters, including massive flooding, landslides and tsunamis in the United States and around the world, also are posted on the GEER website. “In a few months the report about Irma will be updated to include official recommendations about codes and standards. This will happen after the teams have time to go through all the data collected during their visits, Arboleda-Monsalve said.
“It’s civil engineers who come up with solutions and recommend codes and standards to help keep highrises from collapsing during earthquakes, bridges from failing under heavy truck loads and homes from being destroyed during tropical storms and hurricanes.”
“I know I’m not curing cancer, but I am making a difference,” Arboleda-Monsalve said. “By researching how our work holds up in the real world and making recommended changes when needed, we are helping keep people safe. That person from Cape Coral, I’ll never forget her words. She reminded the team that it is our responsibility to help secure our shores from the next natural disaster.”
Anthropologist’s Work Impacting People with Cleft Lip and Palate, Down Syndrome
UCF Assistant Professor John Starbuck thought studying anthropology might lead him to a career in a museum, but it’s done more than he could’ve imagined. His research and discoveries are having a big impact. His work is changing the lives of people with cleft lip with or without cleft palate, and his current research holds promise for helping some people with Down syndrome.
Growing up, Starbuck wasn’t interested in college. His mother worked minimum-wage jobs and his father wasn’t around. But school opened a door for him, allowing a glance at what the future could look like.
“I bought into the idea that an undergraduate education could take me somewhere different and ran with it,” Starbuck said. “I worked in a lot of restaurants in high school, and it was easy to see that those paths have limited opportunities.”
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis offered him a spot at their campus through the McNair Scholars program and his higher education career took off.
While some may say anthropology is a career without modern applications, Starbuck’s work over the past 13 years demonstrates the power of the field to make a difference in today’s world.
As an undergraduate, Starbuck began studying facial reconstruction from a forensic context. Starbuck later went to graduate school at Penn State and became interested in Down syndrome, particularly how an extra copy of a chromosome 21 alters facial development and appearance.
His research interests led him to a post-doctoral position in a dental school looking at unilateral and bilateral cases of cleft lip with or without cleft palate. Traditionally, cleft lips and palates are repaired when the child is young by a plastic surgeon. But those children can later develop dental and breathing issues, requiring additional surgeries. Starbuck realized they were forgetting something: everything in the skull is related – a concept known to anthropologists as morphological integration.
“In the skull, there were different issues that weren’t addressed because plastic surgeons tend to focus on making the soft-tissues of the face look right, but children born with clefts may have impaired breathing abilities due to internal, deep bony obstructions that make them more susceptible to infections,” Starbuck said.
By looking at 3D cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) images of patient skulls, Starbuck and his plastic surgeon collaborators at the Indiana University School of Medicine discovered that extra bony material obstructing the nasal airways needed to be removed to improve nasal breathing. These findings were published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery. This research provides doctors with additional options when completing corrective surgery on patients with cleft lip and palate.
Starbuck’s recent research focus also has the potential to help children with Down Syndrome.
Working with geneticist Randall Roper at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, mouse models were treated with EGCG, an extract from green tea, to see if skull shape and structure would improve.
There was a suspicion that EGCG might tone down over expression of a gene known as Dyrk1a, which plays a strong role in skull development and is triplicated in Ts65Dn Down syndrome mouse models. After the experiments, the mice showed corrected skull vaults suggesting a permanent change in the skull’s developmental trajectory that is directly attributable to early EGCG treatment.
The team published its findings in Human Molecular Genetics in 2016.
Now, Starbuck and Roper, along with collaborator Paul Territo at the Indiana University School of Medicine, want to explore EGCG’s impact more closely.
“The recent work has opened up the possibility that some anatomical changes and health issues associated with Down syndrome can be reduced or maybe even eliminated to improve health and quality of life for individuals with trisomy 21,” Starbuck said. “But we need to do more research on the skull and brain to be sure, and funding is absolutely necessary to carry out these experiments.”
The team has submitted proposals to several funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Lejeune Foundation.
While the team awaits word on new funding, Starbuck and his students continue their work at UCF’s Image Analysis and Morphometrics Lab.
Undergraduate student researchers are recording computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance image (MRI) scans of children with Down syndrome in collaboration with a local doctor. They are creating a database of qualitative and quantitative information for future research to identify and quantify the ways that trisomy 21 alters skull and brain formation and growth.
Starbuck’s students come from a variety of majors including anthropology, biology, biomedical sciences, and nursing.
“Many of the students in my lab had no idea that the research I conduct is considered anthropology, so I continue to change their perspectives one mind at a time,” Starbuck said.
Shelby Lucia, an anthropology major and research assistant in Starbuck’s lab, said this research experience will give her a leg up when she gets to medical school because it emphasizes understanding anatomy and technology while providing her with an authentic research experience.
“Anthropology is so broad it gives you a well-rounded perspective of humans and human life,” she said. “Just taking a pre-med class on its own wouldn’t give you that.”
Getting people to see anthropology can change lives is one of Starbuck’s goals.
“Anthropologists tend to have excellent research skills, interpretive analysis, and the ability to communicate effectively in written and oral contexts,” Starbuck said. “These skills are transferable to many careers in today’s job market, although employers do not always know that someone with anthropological training can fulfill their needs. As anthropologists, we have to go the extra mile to educate the public about the power of our field and the significant contributions we make on a regular basis to improve the world we live in.”
UCF Reports $136 Million in Research Funding in FY17
ORLANDO – UCF faculty brought in $136 million in research funding in 2017, a year that was also marked by national recognition for the number of patents issued to UCF, tech transfer excellence and overall innovation.
Of all the research funding collected, $73.9 million came from federal sources, $41.1 million from private industry and $21 million from state and local government agencies.
The College of Engineering and Computer Science garnered the largest proportion of the total with $33 million, followed by the College of Sciences with $16 million and the Institute for Simulation and Training $14 million.
“We’re off to a good start with funding,” said Elizabeth Klonoff, vice president for research and dean of the College of Graduate Studies. “But where we truly see the impact is in what our researchers are doing to help our communities — from finding new ways to make solar energy systems more efficient and affordable, to improving forecasting methods for sea level rise, to exploring vaccines that have the potential to eradicate disease. It is in this broad array of areas where you can see UCF making a big difference. As we continue to grow our funding, we’ll have more opportunities to have an impact in our Central Florida community and beyond.”
UCF’s research is already getting national attention.
Earlier this year the National Academy of Inventors and Intellectual Property Owners Association announced the University of Central Florida ranks 41st in the world for the number of U.S. patents issued in 2016. From this report, UCF ranks 21st among public universities in the nation.
The recognition is an important one because patents often lead to industrial innovations that impact daily life.
UCF was ranked in the top 25 in the nation in technology transfer, the process of disseminating technology developed as a result of research, along with Columbia University, MIT and Carnegie Mellon University in a report from The Milken Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
U.S. News & World Report’s Best College guide this month (September) also named UCF one of the most innovative universities in the nation, alongside Harvard, Stanford and Duke. UCF was No. 25 out of nearly 1,400 universities and colleges in the nation. UCF also was ranked No. 91 in engineering doctorate programs. Earlier this year, U.S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools of 2018 also recognized 22 UCF programs in the top 100 in their respective fields.
Professors are working on projects that could potentially revolutionize industries and save lives.
For example, Engineering Professor Shawn Putnam is working to change the way electronic devices use and dissipate heat. His work is designed to help keep up with the global demand for faster, more powerful and smaller devices such as computers, radars and lasers. He was awarded a $510,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support this work.
The Department of Energy this past year supported UCF researchers at the Florida Solar Energy Center and the College of Engineering and Computer Science with almost $4 million of funding to expand their work in solar energy, energy efficiency and improving air quality in homes.
UCF researchers from the College of Medicine, the NanoScience Technology Center, the College of Science and the College of Engineering & Computer Science received more than $1.3 million from the state to come up with ways to combat the Zika virus.
And an assistant professor of philosophy conducted fieldwork at the Dunhuang Mogao Caves along the Silk Road in China this summer. Lanlan Kuang is one of a select group of international scholars with access to the caves which house the largest and most complete repository of Buddhist art, murals and painted sculptures in the world. She will share her findings at conferences around the world including the International Symposium on Cultural and Art Exchanges and Cooperation in Dunhuang, China, in October and at the national conference of Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory in November.
All this research and the funding that comes with it is also important for one other reason.
“Research is fundamental to our mission of educating our students,” Klonoff said. “Hands-on research is essential to preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers, so they can help us with tomorrow’s challenges.”
UCF Partners with World Wildlife Fund for Study on Wildlife Rangers
ORLANDO — Wildlife rangers are on the front lines protecting our most iconic species — tigers, elephants, gorillas and many others. But their challenges involve more than confrontations with wild animals and poachers.
“Generally, rangers are highly undertrained, undersupported and not respected,” said Barney Long, former director of species conservation for the World Wildlife Fund and now with Global Wildlife Conservation. “We put people in charge of these valuable resources and yet we don’t look after the people who are taking care of them.”
What motivates a ranger to do a job with low pay, long absences from family and the risk of life-threatening attacks? UCF researchers are working to answer this question in collaboration with the WWF, a leading international conservation organization headquartered in Washington.
The team’s findings are published in Oryx: The International Journal of Conservation.
“This is a completely new area of investigation for the WWF and really a new topic within conservation sciences and policy,” said Will Moreto, UCF assistant professor of criminal justice and the lead author of the new study with Long and others on rangers working in Asia.
“You need to understand the day-to-day realities of rangers if you want to develop a ranger force that is motivated and effective in conservation,” he said.
Moreto established himself as a researcher with interests spanning crime and conservation as a doctoral student at Rutgers University. His dissertation research focused on law enforcement rangers and poaching in Uganda.
Long learned of Moreto’s work and contacted him about a new WWF project on rangers. The organization was planning to survey rangers about their jobs, and Long invited Moreto to help develop the survey questions and examine the data.
From January to July 2015, data collectors trained by WWF employees and other partners met with hundreds of rangers in Asia to obtain their responses to 10 questions, most with subparts. Some rangers submitted their responses by email and postal mail.
In all, the WWF obtained responses from 530 rangers working in 39 conservation areas in 11 Asian countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Thailand and Viet Nam.
At UCF Moreto partnered with two criminal justice colleagues to analyze and interpret the data. Associate professor Jactina Gau contributed expertise in statistical analysis and professor Eugene Paoline shared his insight on law enforcement culture.
The survey asked rangers to rank nine job aspects according to what most and least motivated them to continue working as rangers. Moreto and his team tagged each aspect as being either intrinsically motivated (affected by internal influences) or extrinsically motivated (affected by external influences).
More than 47 percent of rangers selected “I have no other job option” as the aspect that most motivated them. They ranked having good promotion prospects and liking the power and authority of the job as second and third, respectively. All are extrinsically motivated aspects suggesting they are under the control of administrators of protected conservation areas, reported the authors.
More than 47 percent of rangers selected “I enjoy being close to nature” as the aspect that least motivated them and 43 percent selected “I enjoy being a ranger” as second. Both aspects are considered intrinsically motivated.
The survey also asked rangers if they would want or not want their children to become rangers and why. Rangers who were adequately equipped for the job were much more likely to want their children to become rangers, a finding that underscores the importance of work environment to rangers’ job commitment.
The top reasons rangers did not want their children to become rangers were low salary and no reward for hard work. “If you wouldn’t recommend the job to your children, you probably wouldn’t be motived to recruit others,” Moreto said. “You wouldn’t be a good representative in general.”
The WWF expanded its study to include rangers in Africa and Latin America, and Moreto and his team are examining this data as well. They also are involved in a more in depth study of rangers that includes a 120-question survey.
The ultimate goal is to bring policy changes, said Rohit Singh, a WWF wildlife enforcement and capacity building specialist, president of the Ranger Federation of Asia, and coauthor of the study led by Moreto, in a WWF interview.
“National governments have to take the initiative. We need to provide them with good, concrete, scientific data, and advocate for the policy changes that can improve ranger conditions,” Singh said. “The future of wildlife and forests depends on rangers.”
Modern Tech Commercials Still Fall Short in Diversity, Study Finds
ORLANDO ‑ Recent commercials from major technology firms fail to represent diversity of genders and races, according to a University of Central Florida study.
Researchers found white and male faces were dominant in 54 commercials from 2012-13 from Apple, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Microsoft, Comcast, Dell, Intel and Google.
Race was identifiable in 316 of the people featured in the ads. Of these, 68.4 percent were white, 17.4 percent were black, 11.7 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander and 2.5 percent were Hispanic/Latino.
Of the 401 people in the commercials whose gender was identifiable, 58 percent were male. Men also dominated voiceovers in commercials, with just 13 percent featuring a female voice.
“Given these findings, it is possible that video advertisements may not be helping to question stereotypes that contribute to the gap that exists in the field of computer science,” according to the study recently published in Gender Issues.
Just 18 percent of computer science degrees awarded in 2014-15 went to females, and just over 10 percent went to non-white females in that same year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“We’re not saying that these ads cause women and girls to avoid computer technology and other STEM fields, but they also do little to change these patterns,” said UCF professor and co-author Elizabeth Grauerholz.
Subriena Persaud, a graduate of UCF’s applied sociology master’s degree program who is now a development research analyst at George Mason University, was the lead author of the study. UCF associate professor Amanda Koontz Anthony was also a co-author.
When gender and race were combined, the study found white males were the most represented group at 37.6 percent. The second-most represented group was white females at 31.2 percent, followed by black males at 11.1 percent. Hispanic females were the least represented group at below 1 percent, with Hispanic males represented just slightly more at 2.2 percent.
All of the commercials examined advertised a product or service for these companies.
Men have dominated advertisements for decades, according to literature as far back as 1979 that’s cited in the study. Women often were portrayed as subordinate to men, and would have a feminine touch or would be highly emotional and withdrawn from social interactions, for example.
While progress has been made in equal representation – Microsoft’s “Make What’s Next” campaign that highlights women and girls of various races is a great example, said Grauerholz – there is still room for improvement.
“In many white-and male-dominated fields, there is the assumption that race and gender don’t matter – just talent,” said Grauerholz. “But we know that gender and race shape all interactions, no matter how subtle.”
The researchers hope these findings will spur companies to include more diversity in their advertisements, and that individuals will become more educated consumers.
“Media matters, and as a society, it’s important to open doors to equality, not close them,” said Grauerholz.
U.S. Forecast: Economic Health Hinges on Trump Administration’s Proposed Policies
ORLANDO — If the Trump Administration’s proposed economic policies gain traction, the U.S. can expect faster economic growth and higher inflation, says University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith, but that’s a big “if” given the administration’s tumultuous first eight months.
“Tweeting and talking about policy is one thing,” said the director for the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the UCF College of Business, “being able to continue the regulatory roll back and move tax reform and infrastructure spending into legislative action is the key to accelerating economic growth and extending the life span of economic recovery.”
In his third quarterly national economic forecast of 2017, Snaith said to expect the Federal Reserve to call for another 25- basis-point hike this December and that future hikes will come at a faster pace during the next three years, with the federal funds rate hitting 3.25 percent by the end of the first quarter of 2020.
Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, which slowed to 1.5 percent in 2016, is forecasted to hit 2.3 percent in 2017 and 3.4 percent in 2018 before slipping to 3.1 percent in 2019 and 3 percent in 2020.
The odds of a recession in the final quarter of the year continue to decrease, according to the most recent release of the Survey of Professional Forecasters by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The 35 forecasters surveyed put a 10.46 percent chance that a decline in real GDP will occur in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Average monthly payroll employment growth has decelerated the past three years, and uncertainty and regulatory burden have been hindering payroll job growth, which slowed to 1.8 percent in 2016. The forecast shows payroll job growth slowing to 1.6 percent in 2017 before stabilizing at 1.5 percent for 2018-2020.
The unemployment rate is expected to decline to 4 percent in early 2020, and job growth will be enough to keep up with labor force growth through the end of the forecast horizon. Underemployment, which has been a persistent problem in this recovery and stands at 8.6 percent as of August, also will continue to decline through 2020.
“Continued gains in employment, more rapidly rising wages and improving household balance sheets should continue to provide a solid foundation for continued consumer spending growth,” Snaith said. “Tax cuts and spending programs proposed by the Trump administration should also boost consumer spending growth.”
The forecast states the foreign sector will continue to be a drag on U.S. growth, as a stronger dollar and rising U.S. interest rates boost imports and depress exports. As a result, Snaith said, net exports will continue to fall through 2020.
The housing market, which continues to recover, is expected to slowly improve through 2020, even with rising interest rates. Housing starts are forecasted to rise from 1.24 million in 2017 to 1.63 million in 2020.
For the full forecast, visit: https://issuu.com/ucfbusiness/docs/ucf-us-forecast-sept2017http://issuu.com/ucfbusiness/docs/ucf-us-forecast-september2016
Snaith is a national expert in economics, forecasting, market sizing and economic analysis who authors quarterly reports about the state of the economy. Bloomberg News has named Snaith as one of the country’s most accurate forecasters for his predictions about the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate, the Federal Funds rate.
The Institute for Economic Competitiveness strives to provide complete, accurate and timely national, state and regional forecasts and economic analyses. Through these analyses, the institute provides valuable resources to the public and private sectors for informed decision-making.
CONTACT: Erika Hodges, College of Business, 407-823-3041 or [email protected]
About UCF College of Business
Established in 1968, the UCF College of Business offers degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and executive levels. All programs, as well as the Kenneth G. Dixon School of Accounting are accredited by AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The college provides high-quality academic programs designed to give students a competitive advantage in the world of business now and in the future. Learn more at business.ucf.edu
Zenaida Kotala
Associate Director
University of Central Florida, News & Information
407-823-6120
UCF Today: http://today.ucf.edu
After-hours media line: 407-823-5300
UCF Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month With Adelante Message
ORLANDO – Latinos at UCF won’t let Hurricane Irma stop its Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. Although off to a late start, the celebration is moving ahead starting this week.
“I think it is appropriate that our theme is “¡Adelante! Leading with Courage,” said Cyndia M. Muñiz, president of the Latino Faculty and Staff Association and advisor to the Latin American Student Association. Both organizations are sponsoring this year’s events. “Adelante means to move ahead despite challenges. The programs we’ve prepared this month are aimed at encouraging and empowering the Latino community to lead with courage and acknowledge Latino contributions here, nationally and around the world.”
Those looking to learn more about Hispanics and their impact on the community can check out an array of events from Cuban Chef and author Ana Sofia Palaez demonstrating simple and delicious recipes today to talks about the economic crisis in Puerto Rico and how to identify as Hispanic or Latino.
A diverse panel of Latino professionals will provide advice for combating adversity in the workplace and the documentary Made in L.A. will be screened as well. For a full listing of more than 15 events visit http://ucflafasa.org/.
The Closing Celebration is set for Thursday, Oct. 12, with Keynote Speaker Juana Bordas, President of Mestiza Leadership International. Her talk is entitled “Shaping the Bright Future of America.” Bordas will also lead a workshop on the Power of Latino Leadership on Oct. 11.
“There are more than 15,000 students at UCF who identify as Hispanic/Latino at UCF,” Muñiz said.
The month-long celebration is not the only time the organizers work together. LaFaSA and LASA work throughout the academic year to highlight Latino contributions and achievement, with events like Nuestra Graduación, UCF’s Annual Latino Graduation Celebration, coming in May 2018. LaFaSA and LASA also support UCF’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion and its Hispanic Serving Institution Task Force, which is leading the university initiative to achieve the federal designation of Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).
CONTACT: Cyndia Muñiz, LAFaSA, 407-823-2718 or [email protected]
About the Latino Faculty and Staff Association at UCF
The Latino Faculty and Staff Association (LaFaSA) at the University of Central Florida is an organization dedicated to raising awareness and advocating for the needs and goals of Latino community at UCF. LaFaSA seeks to advance educational and work opportunities that would enhance the status of Latinos/as within the university community. LaFaSA promotes a family environment that embraces and respects the various identities within the Latino/a culture through quality, bilingual programming, networking opportunities and guidance, to UCF’s Latino students, faculty and staff; and the greater UCF community. For more information please visit http://ucflafasa.org or call 407-823-2718.
About the Latin American Student Association at UCF
Established in 1985, LASA is the oldest Latino based student organization and the second oldest multicultural-based organization in the history of UCF. LASA’s mission is to provide the UCF community with knowledge of the Latino culture. LASA has three goals that go unchanged: (1) To provide UCF students with educational and cultural activities; (2) To collaborate with the community and develop a relationship between the UCF student body and the Orlando Latino community; and (3) To provide a familial experience at the college level.
Zenaida Kotala
Associate Director
University of Central Florida, News & Information
407-823-6120
Researchers Land $400,049 NSF Grant to Create Photon Funnels
The National Science Foundation has awarded a UCF-led team $400,049 to develop new devices for concentrating and controlling light called “photon funnels.”
Concentrating light is used in a variety of electronics and machines people have come to depend on, from computers and cell phones to fiber optics and sensors that detect toxic spills. These devices all use conventional lenses to concentrate light, but there is a catch.
The lenses collect and concentrate light on a specific spot, but that spot moves as light rays strike from different angles or positions.
“As a result, sensors and detectors can lose energy as the source of light moves, and the efficiency of an optical device is often limited,” said Stephen Kuebler, associate professor of chemistry and optics, who leads the research project. “Our team will explore a fundamentally new approach for concentrating light called ‘photon funnels,’ that circumvent the limitations that refraction puts on ordinary optical systems. Photon funnels will be designed to leverage an optical phenomenon called ‘self-collimation’ to control how light propagates within an engineered lattice.”
Photon funnels are nanoscale three-dimensional (3D) lattices that are designed to direct the flow of light within them by adjusting the orientation of a self-collimating lattice as a function of position. The lattices will be created using a laser-based 3D printing technique called “multiphoton lithography.”
The interdisciplinary team assembled for the project includes experts in chemistry, optics, physics, material science, engineering, and design and simulation in Orlando and at the University of Texas at El Paso. The research will provide cutting-edge training in Orlando and El Paso for undergraduate and graduate students who work on the three-year project.
Team members also include UCF Associate Professor of Optics and Photonics Sasan Fathpour and Raymond Rumpf, associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the EM Lab at the University of Texas at El Paso. Rumpf is a pioneer in 3D printing of high-frequency circuits and electromagnetic devices.
The work will be evenly split between the professors’ laboratories in Orlando and El Paso.
UCF Energy Researchers Receive $3.1 Million to Make Solar Affordable
The University of Central Florida recently was selected to receive two awards totaling $3.1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative that is focused on making solar energy systems more efficient and affordable.
The UCF projects led by researchers Kristopher Davis and Joe Walters of the university’s College of Engineering & Computer Science and the Florida Solar Energy Center will address two specific areas of interest to the energy agency.
Davis, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the new Renewable Energy Systems faculty cluster, will receive $1.58 million to develop high-speed measurement techniques that can identify potential sources of power degradation in photovoltaic modules, with a focus on degradation in the metal contacts used to carry current.
Davis said: “Our hope is to develop new measurement techniques that will give investors more confidence in the long-term performance of photovoltaic systems. I also believe it will help speed up the adoption of new contact materials by detecting potential reliability concerns and providing insight into possible solutions.”
Walters will receive $1.6 million to devise monitoring techniques to improve operation and maintenance of solar energy fields and provide more accurate predictions of future power generation.
“We want to develop tools to let the solar field operators know in advance when problems may arise and to efficiently plan to make modifications or repairs to maximize energy production,” Walters said.
The two awards with two additional DOE awards received last week for studying how to improve energy efficiency and indoor air quality in homes indicate that the university is hitting its stride across the spectrum in energy alternatives, said James Fenton, FSEC director.
“FSEC was established 42 years ago to serve as the state’s energy-research institute and now we are leading the nation in multiple areas of solar energy and energy-efficiency research,“ Fenton said.
In addition to the two Sunshot awards, UCF researchers were awarded subcontracts on projects led by Case Western University and Brightspot Automotion LLC.
The SunShot Initiative’s Photovoltaics Research and Development 2 funding program seeks to transform photovoltaic module design, explore high-risk emerging technology research, and devices and designs that facilitate rapid solar installation. The projects have the potential to make solar power affordable throughout the United States.
