More than 1,000 UCF students and faculty members will participate in the festival of performing and visual arts that will showcase studio art, music, theatre, dance, gaming, animation, photography and film. This is the first time all the UCF artistic endeavors can be experienced in one place, and all activities are free and open to the public.

The week also will provide invited high school music and theater students unique access to workshops led by UCF faculty members and an opportunity to showcase their talents during select performances at a state-of-the-art venue.

“We’re presenting the depth and breadth of UCF’s arts units to Orlando, taking them off campus and presenting them in one of the best spaces in the southeast,” said Jeff Moore, director of the UCF School of Performing Arts and artistic director of the festival. “Also, this shows how arts integration across all disciplines happens at UCF. This creative environment is necessary to develop community outreach.”

Events are still being added to the UCF Celebrates the Arts schedule, but some of the highlights will feature:

*  Icarus at the Edge of Time. The UCF Symphony Orchestra will perform the music of composer Phillip Glass with an accompanying movie by Al & Al, based on a children’s book by Columbia şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą physicist Brian Greene about a boy traveling in outer space who challenges the power of a black hole. Friday, April 10, at 7:30 p.m.

Kate Mulgrew, who portrayed Capt. Katharyn Janeway in the Star Trek: Voyager TV series, will provide live narration for the fable.

The Icarus presentation is part of a National Science Foundation project that seeks to broaden the participation of students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) research activities, and each year UCF organizes some STEM activities in an artistic way. This event will be an interdisciplinary arts-and-sciences collaboration involving the School of Performing Arts and the College of Sciences. “It is an excellent example of the integration of science, literature, and the performing and visual arts,” said Debra Reinhart, UCF assistant vice president for Research and Commercialization.

*  Several musical collaborations are planned with UCF partners. The Flying Horse Big Band will perform a cabaret with the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, themed “Shakespeare in Love” (Saturday, April 11, at 8 p.m.); UCF Choirs will provide the vocals for the Orlando Repertory Theatre’s production of Civil War Voices, which uses diaries and letters to tell the true stories of people who lived through the war (several matinee productions throughout the week); and the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra will hold a rehearsal for Tosca with an instructional class for voice students following.

*  Theatre UCF performances will include scenes from Nine, Hair, class projects, alumni cameos, and scenes from students who have been nominated for Kennedy Center Irene Ryan Acting awards. The Theatre UCF Dance showcase will feature a selection of dance pieces choreographed and performed by UCF students and faculty members.

*  Music concerts will include performances from the Collide Percussion Music Festival, UCF Symphonic Band, UCF choruses, and the chamber and wind ensembles.

*  Students in the School of Visual Arts and Design will have works from digital media, film, animations, games and studio arts showcased on every floor at the Dr. Phillips Center. SVAD faculty will present lectures on the arts and will be available for portfolio reviews from high school students. A Game Jam will be held so patrons can watch games being developed during a 24-hour period.

* The Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy also will demonstrate the interactive development process of video-game design. Final products and artwork will be on display showcasing the works of students and professionals.

* Performances will be scheduled for select high school musicians. There also will be clinics and workshops for the participating musicians. Schools that would like to participate can contact Kelly Miller, coordinator of music education, at Kelly.Miller@ucf.edu.

Organizers of the festival hope to expand its length and scope in coming years.

“We are using this opportunity to share the products and performances of our university students and faculty. We want the world to know that UCF invests in the arts, and this festival makes that statement,” Moore said. “This celebration is a showcase for UCF to share the return on that investment with the city and the entire Central Florida region. We are looking forward to this inaugural event and sharing UCF’s arts activities, both on and off campus, with everyone for years to come.”

Visit  for more information and updated scheduling. All events are free, but tickets are required for many of the programs. Tickets will be available on the website later this month.

“We have some amazing women here and I’m guessing most of our UCF community doesn’t know most of them,” said Linda Walters, the center’s interim director. “Studies show women tend not to promote themselves and their achievements, but they are truly an important part of our university’s success.”

The center’s mission is to recruit and retain the best women faculty and help them advance in their careers. The center offers an array of resources to help faculty women navigate academic life and balance life and work issues.

The March campaign is one way to recognize the contributions women faculty and staff make. That’s why one woman will be featured on the center’s website every day throughout the month. The center’s program assistant, Fran Ragsdale, came up with the idea, and  the executive council made the nominations and selected the winners. Council members excluded themselves from consideration.

Among the winners that will be featured:

Dr. Debra Reinhart, Pegasus Professor in Engineering currently on assignment at the National Science Foundation as a program director for the Environmental Engineering Program. Reinhart has a long history with UCF. She graduated from the university when it was called Florida Technological şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą.  She left to start her academic career and returned in 1989. She moved through the ranks from an assistant professor to full professor before becoming an associate dean, interim chair and interim director of the NanoScience Technology Center. At UCF, Reinhart’s current position is assistant vice president for research and commercialization for the UCF Office of Research and Commercialization.

Maggie Leclair, an assistant to the dean of the College of Sciences. She previously was an administrative assistant in the Nicholson School of Communication. She’s a long-time UCF employee and supporter and  has a special place in her heart for the College of Medicine. She purchased a brick in the school’s plaza in honor of her mother, Betsy Coull, a nurse who spent her life taking care of others. “Maggie” is best known to many as the past-president of the UCF Women’s Club, and chief fundraiser for their undergraduate and graduate student scholarships.

Dr. Maren Fragala, an assistant professor of Sport and Exercise Science. She joined the UCF family two years ago and has already been making an impact with the local geriatric community. As part of her research, she’s investigating an exercise program that improves muscle quality in older adults. At the end of phase one of her study she found all her participants had improved. She hopes one day UCF will expand its Institute of Exercise Physiology and Wellness to create a world class Center for Healthy Aging and Faculty Wellness Research Center where all the equipment and resources are available to extend UCF exercise training programs to any older adult and faculty member free of charge.

Earthrise Space, an Orlando non-profit launched by aerospace engineering students and advisers, may not win the race to the moon but it has achieved several milestones, including snagging a NASA contract that could be worth $10 million.

NASA is trying to spur private industry participation in space exploration, and the agency has agreed to buy data from Earthrise and five other companies working on lunar robot projects. The contracts are worth at least $10,000 each and as much as $10 million. “This is huge for us. It gives us more credibility,” says Ruben Nuñez, a senior engineering major at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą and a founder of Earthrise and its lunar rover project called Omega Envoy.

Debra Reinhart, assistant vice president for research in the Office of Research and Commercialization at UCF, says the lunar project has the support of the school’s Florida Space Institute.

Earthrise and the other NASA contract winners are among dozens of companies, university consortiums and groups participating in a race-to-space competition called the Google Lunar X Prize. The $20-million grand prize will go to the first competitor to land a robot on the moon, explore at least 500 meters and send video and images back to Earth.

“The moon is the end goal, but they don’t have to get to the moon to succeed. They’re getting turned on to space, and they’re building real space hardware right now,” says Joseph Palaia, an Earthrise board member and vice president of operations for 4 Frontiers Inc., a space technology and consulting company in New Port Richey.

Palaia helped test one of its rovers on a remote island near Greenland in 2009, beaming signals to student controllers in Orlando. The students from UCF and Embry Riddle Aeronautical şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą in Daytona Beach are crafting a more advanced rover and keeping their eyes on the sky.

“We’re aiming high,” Nuñez says.

Source: Florida Trend, , by Jerry Jackson – 1/1/2011

“To have four faculty members recognized by their peers for outstanding achievements in science and engineering is an honor for our entire university community,” said M.J. Soileau, vice president for Research and Commercialization. “In classrooms and laboratories throughout our university, students are working with world-class professors who are leaders in their fields.”

Last year, two UCF professors — Issa Batarseh of Electrical Engineering and Sudipta Seal of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering — were selected as AAAS fellows.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and it includes some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.

Continue reading at UCF News.

Clausen and Geiger are chemistry professors, and Reinhart is a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and interim director of UCF’s .

Cleaning up chemicals used years ago to flush rocket engines and other space industry equipment has proved challenging because the chemicals seeped deep into the ground and contaminated the aquifers. The UCF discovery has led to the first efficient method for cleaning up the sources of the underground contamination by chlorinated solvents that are from the same family as dry-cleaning fluids.

The Emulsified Zero-Valent Iron technology also won NASA’s Government Invention of the Year and Commercial Invention of the Year for 2005. In addition, the group received a 2006 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer. The technology was field tested by the U.S. Department of Defense. It also has been used by governments and industry in Arkansas, Illinois, Tennessee, New Jersey and Florida and by other governmental agencies.

Since 1988, the Space Foundation, in cooperation with NASA, has inducted into the Space Hall of Fame more than 40 technologies and honored hundreds of organizations and individuals for their efforts. Inductions recognize space technology innovators, increase public awareness of the benefits of space technology and encourage further innovation.