News

Pegasus Professor Shin-Tson Wu, Ph.D., was selected this week as the winner of The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE)’s 2022 Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award in Photonics. The award, named for the Nobel laureate who proposed the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus, recognizes “outstanding contributions to the field of photonics and the development…

A CREOL’s alumnus’ groundbreaking work in the field of quantitative phase imaging recently earned him the Dennis Gabor Award in Diffractive Optics from the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). SPIE cited multiple achievements by Gabriel Popescu, Ph.D., ’02, as the basis for the win, including Popescu’s advancements in the technology that study live…

A team from UCF has developed the world’s first optical oscilloscope, an instrument that is able to measure the electric field of light. The device converts light oscillations into electrical signals, much like hospital monitors convert a patient’s heartbeat into electrical oscillation. Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challenge because…

Students and faculty across UCF are benefitting from 250 new mixed reality headsets that will be used for applications ranging from developing robotic sensors to designing interactive backgrounds for special events. The headsets are a gift from General Dynamics Mission Systems and are fully self-contained computers that allow wearers to operate untethered in a hologram-enhanced…

The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded the University of Central Florida more than $1.5 million for projects that will help boost the nation’s technological edge and STEM workforce. The grants are through the DOD’s annual Defense University Research Instrumentation Program and will support equipment and instrumentation to accelerate basic research. The recipients and their…

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.…

A passion for helping others and the technical expertise to make it happen recently earned a global prize for CREOL graduate Ceyhun Akcay, Ph.D., ’05. As senior director of research and development at medical technology company Alcon, Akcay builds lenses to correct cataracts, the leading cause of preventable blindness. The implantable lens developed by Akcay…

The average number of faculty named U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER award recipients at UCF has more than quadrupled since the Office of Research launched a mentoring program in 2019. The National Science Foundation CAREER Proposal Mentoring program was created to increase the success rate of faculty who go after the five-year monetary awards. The…

Brian Monacelli, Ph.D., ’05, may have recently helped send a laser-based Raman and fluorescence spectrometer to Mars on the Perseverance rover, but the achievement he’s most proud of might surprise you. Monacelli’s passion is rooted in teaching and supporting technicians to ensure their success in the workplace. His interest in education began as a youth,…

A childhood growing up in the shadow of the Pentagon led Jennifer Hewitt, a Ph.D. candidate at CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, to pursue a path that will lead her back to her roots. The Maryland native has strong family ties to her motivation for working for the U.S. Department of Defense. “A…

Fourteen students from across the university will serve on UCF’s first Graduate Student Advisory Council beginning this month. The students were selected from a pool of more than 150 applicants and represent all colleges across the university, including UCF Online, who are attending part-time or full-time. They will serve for one year and work directly…

University of Central Florida researchers have developed a device that detects viruses like COVID-19 in the body as fast as and more accurately than current, commonly used rapid detection tests. The optical sensor uses nanotechnology to accurately identify viruses in seconds from blood samples. Researchers say the device can tell with 95% accuracy if someone…