CREOL Undergraduate Student Gabryella Baldaci Inducted into UCF Order of Pegasus
Order of Pegasus is the most prestigious and significant award a student can attain at the University of Central Florida
Gabryella Baldaci says she’s still processing the series of events that led her to this point.
“This is my last semester,” she says, “I feel like it’s the perfect ending!”
Baldaci is one of just 37 UCF students to be inducted into the Order of Pegasus during the April 2 Founders’ Day event. Students selected for this honor represent the most dedicated, passionate, and highest-achieving Knights.
Baldaci and her family moved to the U.S. from Cuiabá, Brazil in 2014. After high school, Baldaci attended Valencia College, where she considered majoring in engineering.
She says everything changed when CREOL’s Undergraduate Advisor Mike McKee came to present to her class.
“Mike came in and he was like, hey, guys, lasers! And I was like, yes. I could not stop thinking about it. I thought, this is the future. There’s so much opportunity. This field is going to boom.”
After touring CREOL during an open house, she decided this was where she belonged.
“I just found my community here,” she says, “Everyone was extremely welcoming.”
A New Home
Baldaci quickly got involved, joining CREOL’s student organizations, volunteering her time to support outreach events, and taking on the role as a student director of CREOL’s Optics and Photonics Summer Camp for high school students.
“She has the experience and insight of someone twice her age,” McKee says. “When she ran our summer camp, she truly ran it, organizing all the complicated aspects and interacting with parents and students to make them feel welcome and supported.”
Baldaci says CREOL’s sense of community was also a driving force for her to focus on academics and research. With a student-to-faculty ratio of about 7:1, it’s hard to run into strangers within CREOL.
“I got to learn from the best,” she says. “I had Dr. Peter Delfyett for lasers, Dr. Rodrigo Amezcua Correa for fiber, Dr. Bahaa Saleh for imaging and display, and Dr. Stephen Eikenberry for geometric optics. I see them in the hallway, and they know me.”
That community connection is also an emotional one. Baldaci tears up as she refers to CREOL as her home.
After taking classes with her peers in other buildings: “I was like, guys, let’s go home. The biggest and the best part of my college life, it’s being at CREOL.”
Lighting The Way Forward
As Baldaci prepared to graduate, she’s preparing to launch her career in the photonics industry.
“I’ve been looking at positions in laser processing, because that’s what a lot of my research is based on,” she says.
Baldaci worked with Associate Professor Xiaoming Yu to investigate ways to treat surfaces with lasers for different applications.
“We have a laser,” Baldaci explains. “What can we do with it? How can we use it to design something new?”
That passion for that work – combined with her passion for CREOL – have inspired Baldaci to reach even higher after entering the industry. She plans to stay involved as an alum, and dreams of starting her own CREOL scholarship fund.
“I don’t want it to be a long-term goal. I want to get to that soon,” she says. “I want to still be very active even when I leave, because I just have so much to be thankful for.”
And that gratitude starts with her family’s big move to Central Florida more than 10 years ago.
“I just want to thank God for this opportunity, because honestly, I would not be here without Him.”
