Under a high-stakes, simulated cyberattack and mounting pressure, the UCF Collegiate Cybersecurity Competition (C3) team proved it can defend, adapt and outperform — earning first place at the 2026 Southeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC).

The team rose above nine competitors, including Tennessee Tech ����ֱ��, Clemson ����ֱ��, the ����ֱ�� of South Florida and the ����ֱ�� of Florida. With the win, UCF advances to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, which will be held virtually next month.

Twelve students make up this year’s C3 team: sophomore information technology (IT) majors Gabriel Edwards and Maksim Shostak; junior IT majors Logan Autry, Anthony Donnelly, Joseph Durand, Adam Raczynski and Jonathan Styles; senior IT major Ardian Peach; sophomore computer science major Tyler Waddell; junior computer science major Benjamin Williams; cyber security and privacy master’s student Andy Pompura ’23; and senior prelaw major Noah Magill, who serves as team captain.

UCF’s Legacy of Cybersecurity Success

Their stellar performance marks UCF’s ninth first-place finish at the Southeast CCDC regional since 2013. UCF earned runner-up finishes in 2017 and 2025, along with first-place titles in special at-large CCDC regionals during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

“UCF has historically maintained high service availability levels while under attack by the red team.” — Tom Nedorost ’02MS, senior instructor and C3 team coach

The team not only clinched the top spot but also swept all three categories, winning Best in Uptime Service, Best in Business and Best in Defense.

“UCF has historically maintained high service availability levels while under attack by the red team,” says Tom Nedorost ’02MS, C3 team coach and senior instructor of computer science and IT. “We lived up to that expectation again this year, which resulted in winning the Best in Uptime Service award.”

Nedorost adds that the team strengthened its ability to complete technical service requests while hardening systems against vulnerabilities to protect their network, key improvements that led to the two additional category wins.

Putting Cyber Defense Skills into Practice

At each competition, teams are tasked with defending a fictional company’s network against cyberattacks launched by red team members attempting to infiltrate it. All the while, competitors must maintain business operations and respond to customer service requests.

Each obstacle mimics real-world scenarios cybersecurity professionals face, allowing competitors to demonstrate their technical skills, business acumen and ability to collaborate.

It’s fun to go up against people [who, collectively,] would be a force to reckon with in the cyber world .” — Noah Magill, prelaw major and C3 team captain

Magill says the Southeast CCDC is among the most competitive, with red team members from leading companies such as Amazon Web Services and Cisco.

“All of them put together make up one of the scariest real-world life adversaries,” Magill says. “It’s fun to go up against people [who, collectively,] would be a force to reckon with in the cyber world — and a lot of [them] are [UCF] alumni.”

Next Up: Nationals

As the team sets its sights on the national competition, the work is far from over. Magill says a few more 100-hour weeks are likely ahead.

“Everyone on the team is incredibly adept at what they do and world-class [in] their specialty,” Magill says. “Leading this team [and relying] on such amazing teammates with such a diverse amount of skills has been really awesome.”

(IST) Director Carolina Cruz-Neira’s career in virtual reality (VR) began as a backup plan.

She spent her childhood training as a ballet dancer. When a knee injury at 21 ended her professional dance aspirations, she leaned on the engineering degree her father had encouraged her to pursue.

While earning her doctoral degree in electrical engineering and computer science at the ����ֱ�� of Illinois Chicago, she discovered the Electronic Visualization Laboratory — and with it, a way to merge art and technology.

“My philosophy as a researcher has always been to take on projects that are a little risky.”

In 1992, she unveiled the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), an immersive VR system that transforms a room-sized cube into an interactive 3D digital world. Unlike early VR headsets that isolated users, the CAVE allows multiple people to step inside the same digital environment, fostering shared exploration and real-time collaboration.

Today, CAVE systems are used worldwide, from gaming and art installations to military training and automotive design, helping industries visualize complex problems, improve safety and refine products before building them in the real world.

Powering the Future of Simulation

Over nearly four decades, Cruz-Neira has made significant contributions to the fields of VR, interactive visualization, high-performance computing and digital twins, which are dynamic virtual replicas of real-world objects used for simulation and testing across industries. Her innovations have influenced training and research for NASA, the U.S. military and U.S. National Laboratories.

By the Numbers: A Lasting Impact

• Secured more than $200 million in research funding
• Authored more than 100 publications
• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering — one of the highest professional distinctions for engineers in the U.S.
• Named an IEEE fellow and Forbes’ 50 Over 50 honoree for innovation
• Inducted into the inaugural Augmented World Expo XR Hall of Fame and the Orlando Tech Community Hall of Fame for her contributions to Central Florida’s tech ecosystem
• Recognized in the U.S. Congressional Record for the national impact of her work

“My philosophy as a researcher has always been to take on projects that are a little risky,” says Cruz-Neira, UCF’s Agere Chair Professor of computer science. “I tell my students that we do research with a purpose. And yes, it’s challenging. But if we have that vision of where this thing is going, our talent and creativity have a terrific playground.”

That bold spirit of exploration drew her to UCF in 2020 — a university recognized for its strength in computer science and deep partnerships and collaborators across several sectors, including space, defense, entertainment and healthcare.

“There’s a whole community of researchers, faculty and students here who are passionate about this kind of work.”

Since arriving, she says she has found something even more powerful: a culture that pairs high-level excellence with a nurturing environment — where ambitious ideas are energized, challenged and brought to life through collaboration.

“There’s a whole community of researchers, faculty and students here who are passionate about this kind of work. That has allowed us to expand our ideas tremendously,” Cruz-Neira says. “We’re now collaborating with teams across the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the College of Medicine, the College of Arts and Humanities and the , which broadens what we’re able to do. It’s nice to have a tribe around you, where everyone helps each other and works together.”

Among those collaborators is longtime colleague and IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Service awardee, Gregory Welch. Cruz-Neira says they first met as “Ph.D. babies,” beginning a collaboration that has now spanned nearly 38 years. Since joining UCF, she has continued working closely with Welch and his team on several joint research projects and publications.

What’s Next: Blending Physical and Virtual Worlds

As IST director, Cruz-Neira is helping broaden UCF’s modeling and simulation legacy while leading several cutting-edge research projects in collaboration with talented students and faculty. One such project explores humanoid robots as extensions of the human body, allowing a person to navigate remote or inaccessible locations in real time. Using artificial intelligence, the robot captures its surroundings and transmits a live digital replica into the CAVE, where a human operator’s movements control the robot, creating a seamless exchange between physical and virtual worlds.

“This project opens a lot of possibilities and aligns with where we want to go at IST and UCF,” Cruz-Neira says. “We do a lot of work with defense, first responders and healthcare professionals, and in many cases, we see the need for a human [presence in locations] that aren’t feasible. By combining mature technologies available in the commercial world with some of our more advanced algorithms and system designs at UCF, we’ve finally been able to come together to make this prototype and showcase it in December 2025 at [the Interservice/Industry Training Simulation and Education Conference], a major defense training environment.”

Cruz-Neira continues to push boundaries, bringing people together and asking questions like, “What can we create next?” and “How far can we take this?”

And despite a lifetime achievement award, she’s clear about one thing: “I’m not done yet.”

LaViola is one of 11 computer science academics and professionals selected for induction into the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI) Academy this year. He will be honored during an awards ceremony at the 2026 CHI conference in Barcelona, the leading international conference on human-computer interaction.

“It means a great deal to me, both personally and professionally, to be included with so many outstanding HCI researchers and pioneers in the field,” LaViola says. “This honor helps recognize the work I have done over the last 20-plus years in the field, and I am truly humbled to be part of this select group.”

LaViola manages the Interactive Computing Experiences Research Laboratory at UCF, where his work with 3D user interfaces, 2D and 3D gesture recognition and sketch- and touch-based interfaces contributed to his induction into the ACM SIGCHI Academy. He and his team are currently developing multimodal interfaces that use visual language models to track users’ movements and eye gaze and interpret their speech. The goal is seamless human-computer interaction, enabling computers to predict user needs without requiring exact commands. He’s also the lead author of the second edition of 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice, the first comprehensive book on the topic.

Since joining UCF in 2007 as an assistant professor, LaViola has risen to become the Charles N. Millican Professor of computer science and director of the Interactive Computing Experiences Research Cluster. He has published more than 200 refereed journal and conference articles and written eight book chapters. He contributed to leading research that demonstrates how stereoscopic 3D viewing, head tracking, gestural control and eye tracking can affect a player’s performance in video games.

In 2025, LaViola was inducted into the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Visualization and Graphics Technical Community’s Virtual Reality Academy. He is a senior member of both IEEE and ACM.

LaViola says his induction is a shared achievement and thanks those who helped him along the way.

“Being inducted into the SIGCHI Academy is not an honor that is achieved in isolation,” he says. “I would like to thank my Ph.D. advisor, Andries van Dam, for his guidance over the years, as well as Robert Zeleznik, with whom I have collaborated closely on many human-computer interaction projects during my career. I would also like to thank my book collaborators Doug Bowman, Ernst Kruijff, Ivan Poupyrev and Ryan McMahan, as well as my graduate students who did a lot of the work that I am being recognized for. Finally, I would like to thank Steve Feiner for nominating me for inclusion into the SIGCHI Academy.”

Nothing motivates Ilkin Isler ’22MS ’25PhD quite like this phrase: “It can’t be done.”

When Isler says candidly, “Working on my Ph.D. is the most difficult thing I’ve ever faced,” there’s a montage of difficult things in her life to consider — physical and mental, past and present.

For example, in August 2025, the recent computer science doctoral graduate began work as a senior artificial intelligence (AI) engineer at Universal Creative. Her role involved analyzing complex white papers and developing state-of-the-art AI systems from scratch — all for the purpose of improving the safety of park guests.

“I find solutions for high-risk applications,” Isler says, “which is a good description for what I love to do.”

“… when I hear something can’t be done, it motivates me to make it happen.” — Ilkin Isler ’22MS ’25PhD

The fact that her work requires fortitude also fits Isler well. In high school in Turkey, she once walked into a gym “just for something to do.” A trainer immediately suggested she head to the cardio area, where she’d blend in easily. Isler, however, saw the powerlifting space and thought, “�ճ󲹳�’s what I want to do.”

“I had to teach myself how to do [powerlifting],” she says. “People probably thought I’d give up, but when I hear something can’t be done, it motivates me to make it happen.”

Self-taught and competing despite her small frame, Isler went on to become a European powerlifting champion.

All of this is important for understanding the person who, while studying at UCF, helped develop an AI model to assess cancerous tumors.

Using Computer Imaging to Enhance Patient Care

Guided by a team of advisors, Isler came up with a way to feed medical imaging into an algorithm that measures shapes and textures with more speed, precision and consistency than is currently possible. Given such accurate information, an oncologist could make quicker, more confident decisions — improving overall patient care.

“… [Ilkin’s] work helps push the field forward in an important and timely way.” — David Mohaisen, UCF computer science professor

“The problem she chose to work on is inherently difficult for several reasons,” says David Mohaisen, UCF computer science professor and one of her advisors. “Medical imaging is a high-stakes domain where errors have serious clinical consequences.”

“It’s also a mature and crowded research area, with competitive works focusing on incremental benchmark gains rather than addressing deeper issues, such as reliability, uncertainty and clinical integration,” Mohaisen continues. “Instead of chasing marginal improvements, Ilkin focused on meaningful outcomes. Her work helps push the field forward in an important and timely way.”

Yet the breakthrough alone, and the work that went into it, does not fully capture what Isler faced at the dizzying start of her doctorate journey.

Taking a Chance to Change Her Life and Others

Isler arrived from Turkey with two suitcases and a hotel reservation near UCF.

“My mom filled one of the suitcases with Turkish food,” Isler says. She can laugh now, but at the time, she had no clear path beyond the airport. “I had to figure everything out.”

A few years earlier, she traveled across the globe to UCF as an undergraduate, having earned a competitive internship in the Synthetic Reality Lab, where she worked with Pegasus Professor Charles Hughes and then computer engineering doctoral student Kamran Ali ’21PhD on facial expression recognition.

“She committed herself to the research,” Hughes says, “and even contributed to writing and editing the resulting report after she returned to Turkey.”

Days away from starting doctorate-level research, with all her belongings in a single piece of luggage, Isler would do what she does best: find a way. She moved from the hotel to an unfurnished apartment.

But with her, Isler brought two specific interests to her postgraduate research at UCF. Her mother, a dentist in Turkey, inspired an interest in medical advancement. Her father, a computer science professor, recognized in his daughter the curiosity and determination required for the field.

“If I know an idea can be impactful, I’ll do whatever is necessary to make it a reality,” she says. “The higher the stakes, the more driven I become.”

Those stakes led her to focus on medical imaging solutions for cancer care worldwide. Without a medical background, she collaborated with doctors. It helped that she never looked at her research as an academic exercise. She wanted only to deliver something trustworthy that clinicians everywhere could use to eliminate gray areas in image analysis.

“I’ve been fortunate to work with many doctoral students over the years, and Ilkin stands out on multiple levels,” says Mohaisen, pointing out her motivation, energy and curiosity, before adding: “I’d say she is among the most driven.”

Fueled by Challenge and Service

By now, the source of Isler’s uncommon drive is clear. Every time someone showed skepticism about her powerlifting, she responded by breaking a national record. Although she could have attended a private college in Turkey, where she would have been surrounded by familiar language and culture, she instead chose to move across the world to study AI.

There’s one more motivation that consistently guides her: others.

Isler considers her greatest accomplishment in powerlifting to be the doors she helped open for others in Turkey to try any form of fitness they choose. And she says she would gladly move to another continent again, with just a suitcase and her AI skills, if it meant helping improve the lives of others.

“When I look back, I can see that I’ve often traded comfort for growth,” she says, “and I will not hesitate to do it again.”

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Solihin to its 2025 class of fellows — a distinction awarded to just 71 professionals worldwide for their remarkable achievements, technical innovations and lasting contributions to the field.

Selected from ACM’s 100,000 members, the new fellows will be formally inducted at the ACM Awards Banquet in June.

For Solihin, the recognition represents something deeper than a title.

“Being one out of 71 selected for this designation worldwide in 2025, I feel deeply honored,” he says. “This recognition is the culmination of decades of research in computer architecture, with contributions from my former and current Ph.D. students and collaborators.”

A Pioneer in Computer Architecture

Long before today’s cloud-powered, security-conscious computing era, Solihin was asking questions others weren’t.

In the early 2000s, as research focused on single-core processors, he turned his attention to multicore systems and uncovered a hidden flaw. His research group identified a critical performance challenge in shared cache architecture: uneven slowdowns caused by cache sharing. When multiple programs run simultaneously and share a common cache, some slow down more than others due to resource limitations.

“I feel deeply humbled because, at the time I chose to work on these problems, it was not clear how important they would turn out to be.”

Groundbreaking when it emerged in 2003, this phenomenon is now widely known and studied by computer scientists. Solihin and his group coined the term “fair cache sharing” and introduced a technique to partition the cache so programs slow down equally, ultimately improving overall performance. They also coined the term “cache quality of service,” advocating for cache policies that enable differentiated performance levels. Solihin also pioneered research on secure processors, which allow applications to run in an environment protected from vulnerabilities in system software.

Today, those once-theoretical ideas are foundational. Cache partitioning and secure processors are now standard features in graphics processing units and central processing units, particularly those powering cloud computing systems worldwide.

“I feel deeply humbled because, at the time I chose to work on these problems, it was not clear how important they would turn out to be,” Solihin says. “I started working on … cache partitioning when the hot research topics of the day were single-core processors. I started working in secure execution environment design when it was still unclear if hardware architecture should play a major role in computer security.”

Making an Impact in Industry and Education

After earning his doctorate in computer science from the ����ֱ�� of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Solihin worked as a professor at North Carolina State ����ֱ��. He then joined the U.S. National Science Foundation, where he served as a program director for secure and trustworthy research on cyberspace and computer systems.

When he joined UCF in 2018, that bold ambition and pioneering spirit came with him.

As director of the at UCF, Solihin helped expand the university’s research footprint and developed the Cyber Security and Privacy master’s program within the Department of Computer Science. Under his leadership, the program has grown to 200 students, the research cluster has added 13 faculty members and his findings have been incorporated into the computer processing industry’s design and development of computer architecture.

Yet Solihin doesn’t claim any of these achievements as his greatest.

“The achievement I am the proudest of is the positive impact I have made on students that I have advised,” he says. “Some of my past students have established good careers of their own, including becoming professors at Oxford ����ֱ��, Northeastern ����ֱ��, UC Santa Cruz and Binghamton ����ֱ��.”

Thanks to ’s dedicated support for STEM students, he had access to resources so he would not have to navigate that journey alone.

“Engineering is hands-down our most active liaison area,” says Taylor Sandifer ’23MA, assistant director of employer relations in Career Services who supports all STEM majors, including the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “CECS students show up to everything. They’re really engaged, and they take advantage of every opportunity.”

For Knights like Nguyen, that means access to employers through engineering-focused employer-led workshops, resume reviews, mock interviews, and the highly attended , which occurs annually in the fall at the Addition Financial Arena, where as many as 300 employers fill the venue.

Big Companies Recruit Knights

Before Expo, students can participate in the Career Readiness Program, a two-week series including industry-specific, employer-led sessions where recruiters host one-on-one resume reviews and mock interviews to help students prepare.

UCF’s employer-relations model attracts major companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon, Siemens Energy, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and Walmart directly to campus for tabling, information sessions, and networking events.

“Employers coming in to recruit STEM talent will work with us to get connected,” Sandifer says. “We help them get into the engineering atrium, set up information sessions, reach students through Handshake, and collaborate with CECS to spread the word.

“We want students to see a clear path from UCF to a career.”— Taylor Sandifer ’23MA, assistant director of employer relations in Career Services

“We want students to see a clear path from UCF to a career. When they put in the effort, and we can help make those connections, it all comes together.”

Sandifer has seen firsthand how transformative this can be.

“One computer science student (Nguyen) showed up on the wrong day — in a suit — but stayed anyway,” she recalls. “He came back the next day, met with recruiters, and we connected him with Deloitte & Touche. He ended up getting the job. His hard work and willingness to show up made the difference.”

Real World Ready

Nguyen credits the Dixon Career Development Center in helping him shape his career path.

“I wasn’t very prepared initially and had no idea where to even start. It was overwhelming just thinking about it,” he says. “I attended an event I found off Handshake and it turned into me getting resume reviews, mock interviews, and attending events that got me to meet employers I was passionate about joining.”

He took advantage of summer appointments, interview strategies, and also printed business cards to hand out to the company representatives at the Internship and Career Expo. Those efforts paid off with an opportunity at Deloitte — a place he was drawn to for its culture and its constant flow of new challenges.

His biggest takeaway from his experience with the Career Center is to be persistent and open to every opportunity.

“You never know what conversation you have with someone that could turn into a huge career opportunity,” he says.

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Dedicated resources, personal guidance and a shared sense of purpose help illuminate their path to success. That commitment is reflected in national recognition, with UCF earning a Silver Award on the 2025-26 Military Friendly Schools List — placing Knight Nation in the top 20% of all participating schools — and ranking among the top five colleges in Florida (No. 51 overall) on Military Times’ 2025 Best for Vets Colleges List.

More than 3,300 student-veterans attend UCF, where they’re supported by the Office of Military and Veteran Student Success. This is a dedicated unit that creates an enriching and welcoming environment for military students to achieve educational and career goals through academic success and community partnerships.

Pursuing a degree online is a convenient and affordable path for military and veteran students who balance work and personal responsibilities. As a leader in online education for nearly 30 years, UCF is recognized among the best institutions that offer online programs for service members and their families.

UCF is also a 2025 Best Military-Friendly Online College, according to OnlineU, an organization that reviews and ranks top online colleges with the best value and return on investment. In January, UCF was ranked No. 8 for Best Online Bachelor’s Programs for Veterans by U.S. News & World Report. Best Colleges has also ranked UCF No. 3 for Best Online Military-Friendly Colleges of 2025.

Opening More Doors for Military and Veteran Students

To enhance support for military and veteran students, UCF has formed partnerships to extend academic offerings to this community, including its selection as one of 12 universities nationwide — and the only one in Florida and the southeast — to join the new Service to Service initiative.

The national pilot program is a collaboration between two nonprofit organizations: The Volcker Alliance, which supports public service education, and We the Veterans, which aims to empower service members and their relatives. Service to Service is dedicated to connecting veterans and their families with graduate educational pathways in public service and helping them find impactful long-term careers in public leadership.

At UCF, students who join the initiative, known as Service to Service Fellows, can further their education through the university’s graduate programs in public administration, emergency and crisis management, nonprofit management, public policy, and regional and urban planning. Fellows also benefit from mentorship, community building, professional development opportunities and job placement support.

This is just one of many examples of how UCF opens doors to new purpose after military service — and part of the reason why Trevor Chandrapaul chose to become a Knight after retiring from the U.S. Navy.

“I always knew I wanted to go back to school,” says Chandrapaul, a third-year student who was drawn to UCF for its strong military community and proximity to major defense companies. “I saw how many military veterans actually attended [UCF]. I reached out to someone at the Veterans Academic Resource Center, and they took the time to talk to me and offer reassurance.”

Trevor Chandrapaul: From the Engine Room to Emerging Tech

After completing prerequisite courses at Valencia College with plans to become a physical therapist, Chandrapaul took an unexpected five-year detour in the U.S. Navy. As a gas turbine systems technician working in the engine room, he was introduced to systems and engineering fundamentals — a turning point that sparked his interest in computer science.

“[UCF] is surrounded by so many defense companies, and I felt like it was a good place for me to continue my studies.”

Although he never intended to build a long-term military career, his service shaped his direction. At 26, Chandrapaul says he was feeling slightly out of place as an older student and transferred to UCF.

“Coming from the military, I wanted to continue to serve after my service,” he says. “[UCF] is surrounded by so many defense companies, and I felt like it was a good place for me to continue my studies.”

Through [the Military Veteran and Success Center (MVSC), formerly VARC], he quickly found community among other veterans. The initial intimidation of being older than his peers faded as he connected with other student-veterans.

In his first semester, he landed a job at the MVSC and now serves as a program specialist with the Peer Success Coaches. In this role, he helps military-connected students navigate the transition to UCF — from connecting them with campus resources to encouraging involvement in student clubs and supporting their academic success.

“Through that job, I was able to help host and participate in so many different events and meet organizations like the Student Veteran Association,” he says.

He’s also strengthening his skills in computer science through Knight Hacks, UCF’s largest and only hackathon and software development student organization, while continuing to challenge himself academically. In Spring 2025, he enrolled in Entrepreneurship for Defense — a course he initially picked as a fun elective, but one that quickly became a launchpad.

Assigned to a team developing a maritime awareness system, Chandrapaul worked alongside students from across engineering disciplines. They conducted market research, interviewed high-ranking military officials and industry experts, and presented weekly updates to professors and government sponsors — all of which sharpened his public speaking and technical communication skills.

The experience led to his selection for the Defense Innovation Unit’s summer Maritime Domain Awareness System fellowship.

As a fellow, Chandrapaul is helping improve the safety of maritime environments by developing sensors capable of detecting threats like drug smugglers and illegal fishing activity.

“We recently did a demo on the rooftop of a coastal condo in West Palm Beach, Florida. We got to see a bunch of boats that our radar picked up. We did demos with the U.S. Navy, too. I had the opportunity to visit the Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, which was a base I had pulled into during my time in the service.”

Now, Chandrapaul is focused on solving real-world challenges through technology. With experience in software development, rapid prototyping and mission-driven problem-solving, he aims to work at the intersection of national security and emerging technology.

And he’s not ruling out entrepreneurship.

“Since [taking the Entrepreneurship for Defense] course, we might actually make it into a real business, which now might be in my future plans,” he says. It’s a lot of fun making a project that has a real-world impact. And I have to thank UCF for even presenting me with this opportunity.”

Editing videos with those same AI commands isn’t quite as simple, however, UCF researchers in the College of Engineering and Computer Science aim to change that.

Professor Nazanin Rahnavard, Associate Professor Chen Chen, and UCF alumni Nazmul Karim ’20MS ’23PhD and Umar Khalid ’20MS ’23PhD have developed novel text-to-video AI technology that can dramatically change videos in minutes.

“Our system takes the ‘brain’ of an AI that’s already skilled at generating images from text and adapts it for video, without losing the creative power that makes it effective in the first place,” Rahnavard says. “Our breakthrough came from recognizing a fundamental inefficiency in existing text-to-video editing approaches. Current systems either require massive text-to-video datasets for training or rely on computationally expensive, per-video adaptations of text-to-image models. We believed there had to be a more efficient and elegant solution.”

With Rahnavard’s background in electrical engineering and Chen’s background in computer science, the team used linear algebra techniques to examine the numerical parameters of an AI model that are optimized and adjusted while learning a new task. They realized that instead of fine-tuning the entire parameter set, they could update only the singular values, preserving the AI model’s ability to generalize while speeding up its adaptation time.

“The key was learning which parts of the AI’s ‘memory’ to adjust, and which to preserve,” Rahnavard says. “By focusing only on the most essential elements and leaving the rest untouched, we created a method that adapts much faster and more efficiently while still producing high-quality, expressive results.”

The AI model works best on existing video clips and can edit them in minutes. It can change the colors of clothing, swap a cat for a dog or transform the clip into a cartoon. The more complex the commands, the longer the editing time. But Rahnavard says the process can still be completed in minutes, not hours.

The university was recently awarded a patent for the technology, which movie studios and social media companies could use.

“This technology has the potential to revolutionize video editing across a wide range of industries,” Rahnavard says. “Movie studios could use it for rapid scene modifications without the need for costly reshoots, while social media platforms could offer their users instant, highly sophisticated video filters far beyond what’s available today.”

Led by UCF Professor of Biology and developed by undergraduate students, the new game blends research with interactive learning.

“My work on parasitic wasps and their symbiotic viruses forms the foundation for the game and other outreach efforts designed to engage the public with biology in a fun and accessible way,” Sharanowski says.

The game was created by computer science senior students as part of their capstone project under the supervision of Associate Lecturer of Computer Science Matthew Gerber, with Sharanowski providing the concept. It represents the second phase of development, with an earlier senior group of students building the original concept and the second group advancing it into a fully playable desktop version.

“The students coded, designed and refined the game, which was initially envisioned as a virtual reality experience but shifted to a desktop game  due to delays from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sharanowski says.

In the game, players take on the role of scientists tasked with protecting a national park by designing custom wasps to control invasive pests.

“The goal as a scientist is to save the park by releasing specially designed wasps with beneficial features like paralytic venom, long ovipositors or even mind control, that make them more effective at targeting host species such as caterpillars, beetles and aphids,” she says.

Along the way, players encounter educational blurbs that explain these traits and reinforce the idea that not all wasps sting and many are actually beneficial to humans and ecosystems.

“These wasps can be endoparasitic, developing inside their host, or ectoparasitic, developing outside the host,” Sharanowski says. “You can find them all around the world, including in our backyards, and they serve an important role in nature as natural agents of pest control, thereby reducing the need for pesticides.”

The project was funded through the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Rules of Life Initiative, which brings together multiple NSF divisions to address the fundamental questions about how living systems function and evolve.

According to Sharanowski, parasitic wasps are one of the most varied lineages on Earth, with more species than all vertebrates combined.

“For every insect that’s out there, there’s likely one or more parasitic wasps that attack it,” she says.

Her research explores the unique symbiosis between wasps and viruses.

“Over time, some viruses have become integrated into the genomes of certain parasitic wasps, effectively making the virus and wasp a single organism,” Sharanowski says. “The virus no longer replicates independently — its reproduction is tied to the wasp’s. When a female wasp lays an egg inside a host, the virions enter the host and activate viral genes that manipulate the host’s immune system and behavior, benefiting the developing wasp.”

This wasp-virus relationship has evolved multiple times and remains a central focus of her research.

As a first-generation college graduate, Sharanowski says this project has been a way to share her passion for entomology and science, as well as to provide educational opportunities for people to learn about wasps in a fun way.

“One of my core values as an educator is to make science engaging,” she says. “I enjoy doing campus and community outreach to show how fascinating these insects are, and I believe this game does that.”

She also highlighted UCF’s Collection of Arthropods, commonly known as the , as a public resource preserving and showcasing the biodiversity of insects in Central Florida.

Looking ahead, Sharanowski says a third group of students is currently working on a mobile version of the game, expected to launch later this year.

“There is so much beauty out there, and I want people to see how fascinating bugs are and the important role they play in ecosystems,” she says.

With video surveillance becoming more and more ubiquitous, UCF Center for Research in Computer Vision (CRCV) Assistant Professor Yogesh Rawat, and his collaborators Mubarak Shah and Chen Chen, are working to address privacy issues with advanced software installed on video cameras. Their work is supported by $200,000 in funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research Translation (NSF ART) program.

“Automation allows us to watch a lot of footage, which is not possible by humans,” Rawat says. “Surveillance is important for society, but there are always privacy concerns. This development will enable surveillance with privacy preservation.”

His video monitoring software protects the privacy of those recorded by obscuring select elements, such as faces or clothing, both in recordings and in real time. Rawat explains that his software adds perturbations to the RGB pixels in the video feed – the red, green and blue colors of light – so that human eyes are unable to recognize them.

“Mainly we are interested in any identifiable information that we can visually interpret,” Rawat says. “For example, for a person’s face, I can say ‘This is that individual,’ just by identifying the face. It could be the height as well, maybe hair color, hair style, body shape — all those things that can be used to identify any person. All of this is private information.”

Since Rawat aims to have the technology available in edge devices, devices that are not dependent on an outside server such as drones and public surveillance cameras, he and his team are also working on developing the technology so that it’s fast enough to analyze the feed as it is received. This poses the additional challenge of developing algorithms that can process the data in real-time, so that efficient graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) can handle the workload of analyzing footage as it is captured.

To that end, his main considerations in implementing the software are speed and size.

“We want to do this very efficiently and very quickly in real time,” Rawat says. “We don’t want to wait for a year, a month or days. We also don’t want to take a lot of computing power. We don’t have a lot of computing power in very small GPUs or very small CPUs. We are not working with large computers there, but very small devices.”

The funding from the NSF ART program will allow Rawat to identify potential users of the technology, including nursing homes, childcare centers and authorities using surveillance cameras. Rawat is one of two UCF researchers to have projects initially funded through the $6 million grant awarded to the university earlier this year. Four more projects will be funded over the next four years.

His work builds on several previous projects spearheaded by other CRCV members, including founder Mubarak Shah and researcher Chen Chen, including extensive work that allows analysis of untrimmed security videos, training artificial intelligence models to operate on a smaller scale and a patent on software that allows for the detection of multiple actions, persons and objects of interest. Funding sources for these works include $3.9 million from the IARPA Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range program, $2.8 million from Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Deep Intermodal Video Analysis, and $475,000 from the U.S Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.

Rawat says his work in computer vision is motivated by a drive to improve our world.

“I’m really interested in understanding how we can easily navigate in this world as humans,” he says. “Visual perception is something I’m very interested in studying, including how we can bring it to machines and make things easy for us as humans and as a society.”

About the Researcher

Yogesh Rawat is an assistant professor at the Center for Research in Computer Vision at UCF. He earned his doctorate in computer science at the National ����ֱ�� of Singapore and completed his postdoctoral training in the Center for Research in Computer Vision at UCF from 2017 to 2019. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Varanasi in 2009.