GK-12 PROGRAM RECEIVES NSF FUNDING
Dave Hagan from the College of Optics & Photonics has received $450,000 from the National Science Foundation for a project to pair graduate students with ninth grade science teachers in Orange County. The beauty of the project is that the graduate students are not education majors – they are science students who will help the teachers learn more about the specifics of several science related disciplines. NSF is counting on the project to improve education in the sciences in the public schools and also to increase the number and quality of science majors at UCF. The program offers the graduate students $30,000 a year for participating.

EDUCATION RESEARCHER RECEIVES CAREER AWARD
Bobby Jeanpierre, an assistant professor in the College of Education, has received the NSF Career award for her project which aims to significantly impact science teaching in diverse (50% or more students on free and reduced lunch) settings. Her project, “Inquiry Teaching and Learning: Connecting Research and Practice” will look at how inquiry and reform science practices are implemented in diverse environments in order to contribute to building a stronger and more diverse group of scientists entering universities. The award is approved for five years for a total of $691,855.

CHIP PROCESSING FUNDING CONTINUES
Eric Johnson of the College of Optics & Photonics has received $2.85 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for his continued work on a five-year project to develop specific platform technologies that benefit from wafer-based processing and integration. The project, begun in 2003, has generated a total of $5,699,086 in funding to date.

IST TESTBED PROJECT RECEIVES $992,000
A Research and Testbed Product Integration project that creates simulated battle conditions to help train troops has received $992,000 from the US Army. Gary Green and Mike Dolezal from the Institute for Simulation and Training, and Florian Jentsch and Peter Hancock from Department of Psychology are working on the project.

FDOE FUNDS UCF PRE-K PROJECT
College of Education researcher Lee Cross has been awarded $652,000 from the Florida Department of Education to continue efforts to meet the special needs of pre-kindergartners with disabilities. The Technical Assistance and Training System is using multiple methods including needs assessment surveys and integration of existing resources, to develop a highly qualified workforce to work with these children and their families.

SBDC FUNDED
UCF’s Small Business Development Center has received $580,000 from the US Small Business Administration through the University of West Florida to continue providing seminars and individual counseling to small businesses in Central Florida. The center has regional offices at Brevard, Seminole and Daytona Beach Community Colleges and the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce. In the last 25 years, the SBDC has helped 25,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs.

CREOL STUDENTS WIN NEWPORT AWARD
Chien-Hui Wen and Yi-Hsin Lin from CREOL won Newport Spectra-Physics Research Excellence awards at the Photonics West laser and optics conference this winter. The awards program provided Photonics West travel support to university students presenting original research at the meeting held in San Jose.

BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE STUDENTS AWARDED DARDEN FELLOWSHIPS
Two students in the Burnett College of Biomedical Sciences have been awarded Darden Fellowships in the amount of $3,000 each. The fellowship originally was for one student for $3,000 but the quality of the applicants convinced Darden to present two awards this year. The students, Gopi Maharaja and Maureen Sawh will receive laboratory training at Darden’s Total Quality Microbiology and Analytical Laboratory in south Orlando just north of the Florida Mall.

CREOL CELEBRATES AFFILIATES’ DAY
Representatives from dozens of companies across the country were on campus recently to celebrate Affiliates’ Day at the College of Optics & Photonics. University leaders welcomed the guests to UCF and detailed some of the history of the college, the first of its kind in the nation. The program included a full day’s worth of lectures, lab tours and interaction between representatives of the university and industry leaders.

EDUCATOR RECEIVES KENNEDY AWARD
Laura Blasi, assistant professor, in the Education Research Department of the College of Education has been honored with a Kennedy Summer Faculty Research Opportunity Award for summer 2005. She will join colleagues at the Kennedy Space Center accompanied by Terry Tao, a graduate student from the College of Education, to further develop simulation software for use in K-12 classrooms. This summer fellowship builds on their prior work with NASA’s Virtual Lab scanning electron microscope simulation, funded by the BellSouth Foundation.

EMERGING ENTREPRENEURS

Budding UCF entrepreneurs took part in two lucrative competitions sponsored by the Office of Research & Commercialization this spring. In March, 22 students competed for more than $500 in prizes at the first King of the Court quick pitch business competition. Contestants were given one minute to pitch their business ideas to a panel of seasoned entrepreneurs and investors. From left to right are winners Brett Dean (2nd place), Gregory Knop (1st place), Gregory Valor (3rd place) and Jonathan Lawhorn (4th place). And in April, 20 teams with 67 participants competed in the Joust, UCF’s annual business plan competition. The winning team, Adastra Labs, which has planned lightweight, portable headsets combining real-world scenes with 3D virtual reality objects, received $4,000 and one year of access to the business services and advisory network of the UCF Technology Incubator along with continued use of the UCF Venture Lab. Pictured from left are Cameron Ford, founding director of the UCF Technological Entrepreneurship Institute and tournament co-chair, Ricardo Martins, CEO of Adastra Labs, and Adastra Labs co-founder, Vesselin Shaoulov. Any companies interested in sponsoring future competitions can contact Stacey Schmidt, tournament co-chair, at sschmidt@mail.ucf.edu