As the Summer 2026 semester continues, the College of Sciences (COS) community remains hard at work advancing research, celebrating achievements and making meaningful impact. Across every discipline, our Knights continue to demonstrate the innovation and dedication that define COS.

This month’s featured stories highlight UCF alumni scoring roles at the World Cup, a new partnership with the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center and innovative aquatic and marine research led by our Knights. Together, these stories showcase the exciting work and accomplishments happening throughout the college and the people who make it possible.

Whether leading efforts in media relations, human resources, guest and client services, or venue, business and transportation logistics, UCF grads are powering the operations behind one of the world’s biggest events in the United States this summer: the men’s FIFA World Cup.

“Since graduating, my goal has been to contribute to the growth of soccer in the United States. This passion has always been part of who I am, and UCF helped me build the foundation to pursue it professionally,” says communications alumnae Andres Sifontes ’24. “I truly believe we are about to witness unprecedented growth for the game in this country. I hope that at the end of my career, I can look back and say I contributed to that growth — and that it all started at UCF."

As rising temperatures push tropical species northward and mangrove habitats expand into areas historically dominated by salt marshes, scientists are racing to understand how these shifts could affect marine food webs and long-term ecosystem stability.

Meredith Pratt, a UCF integrative and conservation biology doctoral student, is helping answer those questions. Her research on sustainable fisheries management along Florida’s east coast earned her the prestigious Florida Sea Grant/Guy Harvey Fellowship.

“Many of the fish we rely on start in estuaries and coastal environments,” Pratt says. “They grow in protected areas like mangroves and salt marshes before moving offshore. If we don’t understand how those habitats are changing, we can’t effectively manage the fisheries that depend on them.”

For World Ocean Day, psychology doctoral student Andres Käosaar, who researches teams in extreme environments, shares his takeaways after completing the World’s Toughest Row. He and his team of three fellow Estonians spent three years preparing and journeyed as one of 43 boats in the 2025 Atlantic challenge.

“I think one of the main takeaways that I got from this project was really that preparation is everything. Everyone externally was focusing on the mission, the row, because of course that’s the exciting part,” Käosaar says. “For us, completing the row was the goal, but it’s the smallest piece of the whole project. The three years of preparation and those difficulties that we had, this was much more important.”

Four students in the Digital Media master’s program at the Nicholson School of Communication and Media are making an impact through publications, international conferences, public outreach and campus awards.

João de Mendonça Salim, Shyla Nuxol, Jasmine Darman and Martuza Ferdous have showcased their work spanning game studies, generative artificial intelligence, electronic literature, immersive storytelling and digital design. Together, their achievements reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the program and the growing impact of graduate student research at NSCM.

Immune responses are essential for survival, allowing animals to fight infections and adapt to disease threats. By studying the genes behind immunity, scientists can better understand how species evolve and persist in changing environments.

New research published in Genome Biology and Evolution, led by Katherine Martin ’24PhD, an integrative conservation biology alum and postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University, helps address this gap by examining the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a critical group of immune system genes that enables organisms to recognize and fight diseases.

A new study co-led by Associate Professor of Chemistry Xiaohu Xia highlights how nanozymes, engineered nanomaterials that mimic enzymes, could improve disease detection, targeted therapies and technologies designed for harsh for real world environments.

Scientists have long relied on natural enzymes — proteins that accelerate chemical reactions — in medicine, environmental monitoring and industrial technologies. But despite their efficiency, natural enzymes are fragile and can lose effectiveness when exposed to heat, chemicals or long-term storage conditions. Nanozymes provide a potential solution by replacing biological materials with engineered nanomaterials. Built at the nanoscale, nanozymes mimic enzyme function while offering greater stability and flexibility.

In aquatic ecosystems, some species use active sensing systems, emitting echolocation sounds or electric fields to navigate dark or murky waters. This sensory ability can come with trade-offs. For electric eels and their weakly electric knifefish prey, generating electric fields helps them navigate and hunt, but those same signals can also reveal their location.

In a recent study published in Current Biology, co-led by Professor of Biology William Crampton and biology doctoral graduate Lok Poon ’26PhD, found that both electric eels and knifefish strategically suppress and resume their electric signals to avoid detection.

“This study shows that active sensing is not just about gathering information, but also about managing the risk of being detected,” Crampton says. “This opens opportunities for future research, from understanding how other aquatic species respond to electric signals to uncovering whether similar stealth strategies occur in other sensory systems."

A new educational partnership between UCF and the U.S. Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) is creating opportunities for research, student training and workforce development in one of the country’s most specialized scientific fields. The collaboration strengthens critical scientific capabilities, facilitates the sharing of resources and expertise, helps build the radiochemistry talent pipeline and positions UCF at the forefront of nuclear chemistry research that supports national security missions.

“Through collaborative research projects and summer internships, UCF students gain hands-on experience working alongside federal scientists and access to AFTAC’s facilities and instrumentation for research supporting national security missions,” says Vasileios Anagnostopoulos, associate professor of chemistry in the UCF College of Sciences and principal investigator of the partnership.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) is deepening its strategic public safety partnership with UCF by embedding experts at the university’s Academic Health Sciences Campus. Relocating FDLE’s toxicology laboratory to the UCF facility in Lake Nona better connects academic-industry research, workforce development and forensic testing in one of the nation’s fastest-growing medical and technology corridors.

“The closer our researchers are to operational labs, the more responsive and impactful their work becomes,” says Jack Ballantyne, UCF chemistry professor and director of the National Center for Forensic Science. “We’re able to identify challenges in real time and immediately begin working on solutions.”

Ryan Fox serves as the Marketing Communications Assistant for the College of Sciences, supporting the marketing team through email communications, social media content, photography, video editing and graphic design. He also oversees communications, marketing and website management for the Nicholson School of Communication and Media.

He shares that one of the most rewarding aspects of his position has been the opportunity to collaborate with teams across the college and create content tailored to the unique needs of individual departments. He especially values the supportive environment within the marketing team and enjoys learning something new with every project.

One of his favorite memories at COS has been participating in Spark STEM Fest at the Orlando Science Center. He says working alongside different departments and seeing the excitement of visitors made for an inspiring experience that left a lasting impression.

Outside of work, Ryan enjoys video games, weekly Dungeons & Dragons sessions, playing trading card games that combine creativity with strategy and visiting theme parks in matching outfits with his girlfriend, Hayley. With a background in digital media and game design, along with an interest in biology, he says he feels at home at COS.

The Invading Sea 

Sea turtle species, especially the green sea turtle, have shown strong population rebounds after the development of turtle excluder devices in commercial fishing gear and stronger conservation laws worldwide. But the animals still face significant threats from fishing gear entanglement, boat strikes and temperature change.

Kate Mansfield, an associate professor at the University of Central Florida, directs the Marine Turtle Research Group, which has conducted research on sea turtles for more than 40 years. Mansfield told Inside Climate News last year that green sea turtles in Florida experience significant nesting site disruption due to storms, which are expected to increase in intensity as global temperatures rise.

“We also are experiencing storm events that are just the worst ever, historic levels of winds and tides and storm overwash,” Mansfield said. “Each year, we kind of brace for what the hurricane season is going to look like. Disproportionately, green turtles, at least in Florida, on our nesting beaches, are the ones that are hit the hardest by these storm events.”

Lebanon Local 

The New Era welcomes a new staff member Brandon Cominsky, who joined the team earlier this month to help cover local news. For the past five years, he has balanced life as a collegiate swimmer, communications professional and graduate student, pursuing opportunities that have taken him from pool decks across the country to communications work supporting space exploration.

Cominsky grew up in Miami, Florida, and earned two bachelor’s degrees from Florida Gulf Coast University in May 2024, one in communication and one in interdisciplinary studies, before completing two master’s degrees in communication and public relations from the University of Central Florida.

“While national headlines often dominate attention, I believe some of the most meaningful journalism happens in small communities, where decisions made by city councils, school boards and community organizations can shape the future of an entire town,” Cominsky says. “East Linn County Oregon offered an opportunity to tell those stories."

Space.com 

As NASA's Artemis program hits its stride, and in a few years "reboots" our moon with a human presence, there's an urgent need to guard against artistic misrepresentations of the lunar landscape, experts say.

That's the matter-of-fact warning from Daniel Britt, the Pegasus Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences in the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida. He's also the director of the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science.

A flat, dustless moon is not the one we are sending Artemis astronauts to, said Britt. Crews will experience coarse terrain, pervasive dust, and a surface unlike anything here on Earth. These are the facts of life on the moon, he said.

Spectrum News 13 

It’s an unwavering type of commitment: When the alarm sounds, they go. And that's what Orlando firefighter Brian Stilwell did 10 years ago as the attack at Pulse nightclub was still happening on June 12, 2016.

His latest move 11 years ago was to a single-engine station located along South Orange Avenue in downtown Orlando, just yards from Pulse nightclub, which allowed him to slow down. That is, until the call one year later that would change his life.

Stilwell said he came to the stark realization that he needed help of his own. He reached out to UCF Restores, knowing both his job and marriage were on the line. Like so many other first responders and veterans, Stilwell sought out the transformative and free program housed on the campus of the University of Central Florida.

In 2011, following a call from the Department of the Army about treatment options for veterans and active-duty personnel, longtime psychologist Dr. Deborah Beidel launched UCF Restores to treat those suffering from PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, using virtual technology.

IFL Science 

In the winter just gone, before springtime had warmed the East Coast's waters, a cold-stunned turtle was found floating along the shores of New England. Upon closer inspection, a team of experts made a surprising discovery: the frigid individual was a hybrid of two distinct sea turtle species.

As a hybrid, Earl Grey has traits from both parent species: the hooked beak and the round shell of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, but the paler coloration and five back spikes of the loggerhead. He’s also much smaller than the average loggerhead.

His shell was fitted with a satellite tracking device before being rereleased, giving his rescuers a way to follow his progress and wish him well from afar. All of the data will feed into a broader conservation effort supported by the US Navy's Marine Species Monitoring Program, in collaboration with the University of Central Florida Marine Turtle Research Group, aimed at documenting and protecting sea turtle populations.

The Globe and Mail 

Most Canadians have encountered a liminal space without even knowing it. Think empty airport lounges, hallways in windowless buildings, abandoned strip malls.

Now filmmaker Kane Parsons‘s debut film, Backrooms, brings these creepy spaces to the big screen. The idea of “liminality” comes from anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in 1909. He used it to describe the awkwardness and uncertainty someone feels in the middle of a rite of passage.

While online horror stories like Slender Man are based on “boogeymen,” the Backrooms is unique because it focuses on what Natalie Underberg-Goode – a University of Central Florida professor who’s written about liminal spaces – jokingly calls a “boogeyspace.”

“These spaces are not just empty, but they’re almost screaming that there should be people there,” Dr. Underberg-Goode said. The loneliness and endlessness of the Backrooms might scare some people because “there is no arrival,” she added.

The Consortium for Medical Marijuana Clinical Outcomes Research is now accepting abstracts and session proposal submissions for the sixth annual Cannabis Clinical Outcomes Research Conference (CCORC) on November 5-6, 2026, in Orlando, Florida. Submission deadline is July 24.

Learn more here: https://ccorc.mmjoutcomes.org/

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