“Some boats make it around the pond, some spin around in little circles and some sink — designing, building and racing an autonomous (self-guided) vessel is quite difficult,” says Jacqueline Sullivan ’87 ’91MS, instructor of the Introduction to Engineering course that culminates with this final project.

Beyond a passing grade, a coveted grand prize is up for grabs for the team of the fastest vessel: a four-year McGraw book, e-book and software scholarship for each team member.

The race, in its 29th year, has all the components for innovation and potential for a mess. The classes of budding engineers have grown to nearly 2,000 students who form hundreds of teams. They’re using advanced technology and more components.

With this in mind, perhaps the most amazing aspect of the event is that it has become more orderly than ever, with races starting every 10 minutes for nine straight hours. There is no waste, in terms of time or materials.

“Sustainable engineering,” Sullivan calls it, before admitting, “but it wasn’t my idea. Race day used to be a bit chaotic until Mason [Clewis] came along.”

It’s been only two years since Clewis, a senior photonic science and engineering student, recognized an opportunity to create a perfectly tuned e-waste recycling system, a timeline even he can hardly believe.

“The students are doing at this level what SpaceX and NASA are doing at the highest level — reusing and recycling.” — Jacqueline Sullivan, instructor

“At first, I thought I’d run a recycling booth by myself and maybe reuse the boat parts or sell them on eBay,” he says. “But it’s grown beyond me, to multiple departments and a network of volunteers. It’s all happened fast and naturally.”

The magic begins as each race ends. Participants who don’t advance to the final rounds take their boats to a tent where students disassemble each craft with the speed of NASCAR pit crews. They pull out batteries, computer chips and servomotors. Stainless steel screws and hardware are also collected. Whatever is left of the hulls is crushed and deposited into recycle bins.

The oranges are saved for other races.

As the day progresses through dozens of races, the lawn around the Reflecting Pond never changes from its original condition: a green carpet, in perfect spring form.

“The students are doing at this level what SpaceX and NASA are doing at the highest level — reusing and recycling,” Sullivan says. “That’s why I say Mason is my hero.”

A Village Beyond the Tent

Clewis watched his first GNOR as a curious freshman. He’d been working on his own capstone project — developing a temperature-controlled fan. During the races, a few of his internal wheels started turning when he noticed boat carnage spilling from trash cans and onto the lawn.

“Some of the parts on the boats were the same parts I needed for my own project,” he says. “I know plenty of students like me who don’t want to shell out $100 for the same perfectly good batteries, chips and sensors that are being thrown away. Plus, I’m interested in entrepreneurship and keeping the environment clean. So, I took the basic idea for a recycling booth to Miss Sullivan.”

“That’s the most rewarding aspect for me: the lasting impact — a positive, mutually beneficial impact. The campus looks better. Students can access free parts for their projects. Everyone has fun. There is no downside.” — Mason Clewis, student

The power of organic growth took root when Sullivan put Clewis and his project partner, Chris Lesniak, in touch with Jim Essad, manager of the machine shop sciences program. When students from UCF’s Robotics Club found out, they offered to disassemble boats on race day and organize parts for future reuse. Word then spread to College of Engineering and Computer Sciences Facilities Operations Manager Pete Alfieris, who offered recycle containers and golf carts. Don Harper ’88, manager of the Texas Instruments Innovation Lab, said he’d gladly take the discarded wood and barely-used hardware for the next cohorts to access for free.

“I never thought so many people would want to be involved,” Clewis says, “but we’re helping others and there’s something inherently attractive about that.”

Students want to be involved. Faculty and staff want to be involved. In the past 24 months, the savings in money and materials has been incalculable. The cycle feeds itself with the rare combination of sustainability and scale.

“Mason started doing the right thing about a need when no one was looking,” Sullivan says. “Now everyone is looking.”

E-Cycling into the Future

Clewis was in the recycling booth again for this year’s GNOR, but with a slightly different purpose: Teaching freshmen how to run the show.

“I won’t be here in a couple of years, but someone else will keep it going,” he says. “That’s the most rewarding aspect for me: the lasting impact — a positive, mutually beneficial impact. The campus looks better. Students can access free parts for their projects. Everyone has fun. There is no downside.”

A new $1.1 million award to UCF from NOAA Sea Grant as part of the Marine Debris Challenge Competition will fund joint research between UCF’s CEELAB and Aquatic Biogeochemistry Laboratory’s research on plastic-free restored habitats in coastal shorelines and oyster reefs. UCF’s work, in partnership with Texas A&M, and ����ֱ�� of Texas Marine Science Institute was selected as one of 11 projects across Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin. Combined, the team received $2.27 million dollars for the collaborative project.

“We were delighted to receive funding from NOAA’s Marine Debris Challenge Competition — a highly competitive process,” says Pegasus Professor of Biology Linda Walters, who leads Coastal and Estuarine Ecology Lab (CEELAB). “Our take on this was to focus on coastal restoration. We are evaluating novel non-plastic materials used for oyster reef restoration to ensure that there aren’t negative impacts in surrounding marine habitats, including communities that live in the sediment or to larger animals, such as crabs, which call the oyster reefs home.”

Walters says that marine debris — which includes microplastics and nanoplastics — is affecting every habitat around the globe.

“Even though we cannot see them, marine invertebrates and vertebrates consume them, which can negatively impact the animal,” Walters says. “If these animals are then consumed by humans, the plastic enters our digestive tracts. Other microscopic plastic particles are light enough to enter the atmosphere and move with the wind. Recent research is documenting that these particles can end up trapped in our lungs.”

UCF is uniquely poised to conduct this research because of our substantial history of oyster reef restoration within Mosquito Lagoon and our local knowledge of the ecosystem, says Lisa Chambers, associate professor and principal investigator (PI) of the Aquatic Biogeochemistry Laboratory, a co-PI on the NOAA Marine Debris award.

“This research is timely and important because the desire to stop using plastics in coastal restoration has opened a floodgate of new and novel restoration materials,” Chambers says. “This funding supports the continued study of alternative, non-plastic materials for use in coastal restoration. We need to know how materials affect the microbes and natural chemical cycles in the coastal ecosystem and long-terms impacts of restoration efforts.”

CEELAB focuses on a wide variety of problems impacting Florida’s coastal waters, in particular, the Indian River Lagoon system. The group, led by Walters and Melinda Donnelly, a research assistant professor in biology, has a long history of ecosystem restoration efforts that focus on restoration — including oysters, marsh grass, mangroves and seagrass.

As one of the longest running academically based coastal restoration programs in the U.S., CEELAB works with UCF faculty, graduate students, undergraduate researchers, postdoctoral fellows, field technicians, numerous community partners and volunteers to restore Florida’s Indian River Lagoon. Current partners include the Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, Coastal Conservation Association, Canaveral National Seashore, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The combined efforts of UCF and its partners highlight ever-changing best practices in ecosystem restoration and provide a ripe opportunity for research and innovation.

“It’s unique to have a long-term restoration project led by a university laboratory. We started community-based oyster reef restoration in 2007, living shoreline stabilization in 2012, and seagrass restoration in 2024,” Walters says. “We have created a ‘habitat mosaic’ where all these species work together to make the environment better. We are finding lots of areas have degraded, whether through storms or human impact. It’s important to find solutions that bring the natural environment back.”

NOAA also provides large, transformative awards to create communities of practice in coastal restoration and UCF (co-PIs Walters and Donnelly) is receiving $1.2 million for restoration efforts as part of the NOAA funding of $9.4 million to the Indian River Lagoon’s National Estuary Program. NOAA is funding 32 projects nationwide.

“Restoration efforts require funding and are vital for our communities — we are grateful for the continued support of NOAA and the National Estuary Program for our coastal restoration work in Mosquito Lagoon,” Walters says.

CEELAB’s work connects UCF biology students with firsthand experience, putting classroom learning into practice.

“Through this grant, we’re providing opportunities for many students to gain field experience — from planting mangroves to conducting innovative ecosystem research — that has the mutual benefit of restoring vital habitats in Florida,” Walters says. “A lot of the graduate students whose work is funded through awards like this go on to become our coastal restoration leaders at the state or federal level.”

More than 70,000 volunteers — including UCF students, faculty, staff and community members — have contributed to the CEELAB’s coastal restoration work since 2007.

“We are all working together to restore a truly magical place — a place that’s home to birds, fish, mangrove islands, manatees, dolphins and everything that makes Florida special,” Walters says.

However, an environmentally friendly solution may emerge within the next decade with the help of a UCF researcher.

Engineering Professor Subith Vasu is working with commercial truck manufacturer PACCAR, owner of the Peterbilt and Kenworth brands, to create a hydrogen-based combustion engine for heavy-duty vehicles. The project is funded through a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is the agency’s first effort to develop hydrogen combustion engines for commercial trucks.

“We’re fortunate to be part of this project,” Vasu says. “It’s a very prestigious effort for UCF, to be part of this project that’s highly relevant in the decarbonization of transportation efforts around the globe. It will also be a great opportunity for students to get involved with an industry-funded project.”

The Demand for Hydrogen

For decades, diesel has been the fuel of choice for large commercial vehicles. But in recent years, the government has pushed for a cleaner alternative. In 2021, President Biden appropriated $62 billion to the DoE, including $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen solutions as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Over this past year, the Environmental Protection Agency also tightened its NOx emissions standards for heavy-duty commercial vehicles beginning with 2027 model year equipment.

While Tesla has developed a semi-truck that runs on electric motors, Vasu says there are some limits to the weight it holds and the distance it can travel.

“Tesla is developing electric supercars and semi-trucks, but there are limits to the batteries,” Vasu says. “They’re fine for driving down to the nearest town but driving from Seattle to Miami, you need significant battery power, also you don’t have time to wait until it is fully charged since most of these freightliners are under time pressure.”

Building a Better Engine

Hydrogen can solve the problem of a longer-lasting battery, but PACCAR currently has more questions than answers. How will hydrogen behave in the extreme temperature and pressure of an engine? Under what conditions will it ignite? Alternatively, what conditions will prevent ignition?

Vasu and his team of researchers will find these answers through experiments run in their state-of-the-art shock tube. The data collected will be used to create computational models to share with PACCAR.

Vasu received his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Stanford ����ֱ�� and joined UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 2012. He is a member of UCF’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research and is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Vasu is a recipient of DARPA’s Director’s Fellowship, DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Young Investigator grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, American Chemical Society’s Doctoral New Investigator, American Society of Mechanical Engineers Dilip Ballal Early Career award, and the Society of Automotive Engineers SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational award. He has received many of the highest honors at UCF, including the UCF Luminary and Reach for the Stars awards.

UCF and the Corridor launched the program to advance technology commercialization by strengthening the relationship between academic research and its real-world applications. The Industry Innovation Program provides critical funding for research led by expert faculty and students, addresses specific business challenges presented by an industry partner and encourages startups to translate technology in support of the industry partner’s economic development goals.

Duke Energy, a Fortune 150 company serving 8.4 million customers in six states, is the Industry Innovation Program’s first corporate sponsor providing $250,000 to facilitate research activities that will help to achieve its clean energy transition goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Duke Energy is seeking to advance research in Long-Duration Energy Storage (LDES) systems and carbon-efficient electricity generation. In a 2-to-1 match, The Florida High Tech Corridor committed another $125,000, bringing the total available funds for sponsored research to $375,000. Additional program funding through the college, department or UCF Office of Research may also be provided to each project.

The Industry Innovation Program will enhance economic development through technological research and commercialization, build relationships between research faculty and businesses with a presence in The Corridor’s 23-county region and promote workforce development by requiring student involvement. Upon the conclusion of each research project, industry partners may continue collaborating with researchers to investigate their topics further and eventually purchase or license the technology. Researchers may also spin off startups.

“Duke Energy Florida has prioritized energy efficiency and grid resiliency to meet the needs of its customers today and better Florida’s infrastructure for the future. This collaboration is a meaningful way to advance research and propel commercialization conversations to meet these goals,” says Melissa Seixas, state president of Duke Energy Florida. “We look forward to seeing the outcome of these research projects and the innovative solutions they may bring to this industry.”

Through a competitive process, including white paper reviews by university experts and Duke Energy technology specialists, the Industry Innovation Program selected five research teams to receive its inaugural awards:

• Like Li, Associate Professor
  Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
  Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research
  Project: Electrically Heated Thermochemical Energy Storage for Long-Duration Storage and Grid Decarbonization
  This project aims to develop a low-cost, zero-emission, solid-state fuel that enables energy storage for short or long periods. The environmentally sound fuel could be stored until needed to provide low-cost, high-temperature heat for the power block. The goal is to develop this technology for commercial use, helping to support clean energy and improve the reliability of the power grid.

• Manjunath Matam, Assistant Professor
  Florida Solar Energy Center
  Project: A Novel MAZE Connection Technique for Optimal Performance Floating Solar PV System
  Floating solar panel systems, which generate renewable energy on water, often lose efficiency due to dirt buildup. To address this issue, the team is testing a new wiring technique called the “MAZE connection” that improves performance under these conditions, making the systems more reliable and financially sustainable.

• Wei Sun, Associate Professor
  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Project: LESS-FUEL: Long-duration Energy Storage Systems for Florida Utilities toward Emission eLimination
  This research evaluates LDES systems to strengthen Florida’s power grid by storing energy for over 100 hours, ensuring reliability and resilience during demand fluctuations and extreme weather events. By assessing the viability of different LDES technologies, it aims to provide utilities with the tools to integrate these systems, supporting Florida’s transition to 100% renewable energy and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

• Yifan Wang, Assistant Professor
  Florida Solar Energy Center
  Project: Optimal Design and Integration of Hydrogen Energy System with Solar and Peaker Plants
  To support a clean energy transition and reduce emissions, this project will explore integrating hydrogen energy storage with solar power and peaker plants, a type of power station that operates primarily during times of peak electricity demand. By using solar-powered electrolysis to produce green hydrogen, the system would provide long-duration energy storage and dispatchable power, helping to balance grid fluctuations. This project also will develop a dynamic model and an optimization framework to identify cost-effective strategies for designing and operating this type of integrated system.

• Marcel Otto, Assistant Professor
  Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
  Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research
  Project: Long-duration Thermal Energy Storage with Ultra-efficient Molten Salt and Ceramic Particles to sCO2 Heat Transfer
  This project is creating a system that stores excess electricity as heat using molten salt and ceramic materials, which can later be turned back into electricity when needed. It uses supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) to improve efficiency and reduce costs compared to traditional methods. This technology could make the power grid more stable and reliable by storing energy for hours or even days, which is especially helpful in places like Florida that rely on renewable energy. With this advancement, clean, renewable solar energy can be available even when the sun does not shine.

“At The Corridor, we like to say that ‘tech for tech’s sake misses the point.’ Our strategic focus is on technology and research development for the betterment of our regional community, and this new program allows us to do exactly that,” says Paul Sohl, CEO of The Corridor. “The Industry Innovation Program is an exciting step forward, bringing the expertise of our UCF researchers together with industry partners who are addressing some of the greatest challenges facing our region, our nation and the world. It is a powerful combination.”

UCF’s Vice President for Research and Innovation Winston Schoenfeld says the partnership and the projects it supports are examples of the many ways the university’s research capabilities can create lasting, far-reaching impact.

“UCF is honored to collaborate with the Florida High Tech Corridor and Duke Energy to provide this invaluable opportunity to our innovative faculty and student researchers,” Schoenfeld says. “Partnering with industry leaders to solve real-world challenges not only ensures UCF research leads to advancements that have societal impact, but also promotes an educational ecosystem that provides practical training and skill sets to best prepare students for the workforce.”

Fang, who is an assistant professor in within the College of Sciences, is using the CAREER award to study the precise movement of electrons induced by light and to help educate others in her field.

Yao is an assistant professor in within the College of Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Cyber Security and Privacy faculty cluster. He’ll use his CAREER award to identify lapses in computer processing security at the micro level and find ways to defend against them.

The annual award supports an estimated 500 early-career STEM faculty from either institutes of higher education or academic nonprofit organizations who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

Through their NSF CAREER awards, both Fang and Yao are continuing to build upon their research and contribute to key components of their respective fields.

Capturing Energy in a Fraction of a Second

Li Fang
Department of Physics
Title: Photo-induced Ultrafast Electron-nuclear Dynamics in Molecules
Award: $813,981 over five years

Li Fang is examining some of the smallest components of matter in some of the shortest amounts of time.

She studies how electrons move after their initial absorption of photo-energy as they attempt to interact, break or form a bond with other molecular components. The purpose of examining these molecular dynamics is crucial in better understanding physics and energy, Fang says.

“The dynamics of these charged particles will provide fundamental knowledge about energy absorption, dissipation and rearrangement in building blocks of materials and therefore is relevant to energy storage and harvest,” Fang says. “We implement spectroscopic tools to track the extremely fast motion of these charges. An electron’s motion is the first step in all chemical and photo reactions and ions are the subjects of chemical bonds that exist basically in all materials.”

Fang measures these movements in attoseconds and femtoseconds, which are one billion billionths of a second and one million billionths of a second, respectively.

Attoseconds are the natural time scale for electrons moving inside an atom while femtoseconds are the natural time scale for measuring nuclei moving within a molecule.

Fang’s NSF CAREER project will help her further uncover and measure how light can instigate changes at the molecular level and then share her research with the greater scientific community.

“The goal is to understand the ultrafast electron motion induced by intense laser beams and its correlation with the motion of the nuclei in a molecule,” she says. “An equally important part of my NSF CAREER award is the educational subproject, the goal of which is to introduce my research field ‘ultrafast science’ to a broader audience through media and local events.”

Fang came to UCF in 2020 from the Ohio State ����ֱ��.

Since arriving, she has garnered significant funding and support for her projects. In 2020, Fang was one of 76 recipients – and the only recipient from Florida – to be awarded an early career research program grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

She also was instrumental in securing NSF funding of nearly $2 million for a powerful laser in 2021, aiming to build a user facility at UCF to continue studying electrons and molecular bonds using precise measurements in attoseconds.

Fang says it was extremely gratifying to earn her NSF CAREER award, and it represents a culmination of her previous scientific endeavors.

“It definitely fit into my career and will help me fulfill my goals as a researcher and an educator,” she says.

Fang is thankful for the assistance of her peers and collaborators in cultivating her studies and developing her NSF CAREER proposal.

“The NSF CAREER program at UCF organized by Saiful Khondaker is very helpful with improving the writing of the educational subproject, which is crucial to the NSF CAREER project,” she says.

UCF has provided Fang with the opportunity to excel in her research, and she anticipates many more impactful discoveries to come.

“I am looking forward to carrying out real scientific experiments and discovering new findings with the state-of-the-art lasers and the spectroscopy systems we have,” Fang says. “Getting a prestigious CAREER award is just the start.”

Fan Yao
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: Understanding and Ensuring Secure-by-design Microarchitecture in Modern Era of Computing
Award: $556,875

Effective computer system security requires searching high and low within its infrastructure to address vulnerabilities that could be overlooked and exploited.

Fan Yao has dedicated his research to thoroughly poring through potential weaknesses within the architectural and microarchitectural designs of computing and memory units to see how they can be safeguarded against malicious hacks and data breaches.

“In today’s interconnected digital landscape, we depend on computing devices to store and process our sensitive and personal data,” he says. “Given that hardware forms the foundational bedrock of all computing systems, its security is paramount. A computer with compromised hardware security is akin to a skyscraper built on shaky ground.”

Specifically, Yao is using his NSF CAREER project to examine computer processors and analyze side channel leakage, which is compromised access to information or infrastructure through indirect means.

“Through the automation of microarchitectural security analysis, we aim to uncover hidden hardware-level states prone to leakage, as well as to develop software-level patterns that can exploit these vulnerabilities to quantify their leakage potential,” he says. “Subsequently, the project will focus on designing robust defense strategies to prevent microarchitectural information leakage, thereby ensuring stronger protection for future generations of processors.”

The awarded funds will continue to catalyze Yao’s research and allow him to further challenge the limits of computer security. He is hopeful that the results will serve as an educational cornerstone to both aspiring students and his peers, he says.

“This grant allows us to explore innovative security solutions more deeply and to train the next generation of researchers in this critical field,” Yao says.  “This award fits perfectly into my career goals, as it enables me to establish a sustainable research program that can make meaningful contributions to both academia and industry.”

Yao arrived at UCF in the fall of 2018 after receiving his doctoral degree in computer engineering from the George Washington ����ֱ��.

The support and mentorship from UCF’s academic community and administration at UCF has been crucial to helping him achieve his research aspirations, he says.

“UCF has been extremely supportive in junior faculty career development,” Yao says. “Many of the preliminary results for this project were achieved through experiments facilitated by this support. I am also profoundly grateful for the comprehensive assistance received during the development of this proposal. This includes invaluable guidance from the UCF CAREER mentoring program and the insightful feedback on my proposal provided by senior faculty members in our department.”

Yao is proud to have been awarded an NSF CAREER grant, and says he is excited to further his research.

“Receiving the NSF CAREER grant is an incredible honor and a pivotal moment in my career,” he says. “It not only validates the importance and potential impact of our work on microarchitecture security, but also provides a substantial platform to expand our research efforts.”

The metallization process produces the metal contacts that are placed on the surface of silicon solar cells to harvest electrical currents. Silver is typically used to manufacture the contacts due to its ability to withstand high temperatures without oxidizing, but it’s very expensive to use.

“Silver constitutes some of the highest costs to producing photovoltaic cells, and the photovoltaics industry is expected to consume 20% of the annual global silver supply by 2027,” says Kristopher Davis, the project’s principal investigator and a UCF associate professor of . “Copper is less expensive and also has a low electrical resistivity and is therefore a great potential alternative metal, but it has many challenges.”

One of those challenges is the fact that copper can oxidize in high temperatures, negatively impacting its conductivity. To solve this problem, the researchers will use lasers to heat the copper nanoparticles and reduce the possibility of oxidation.

“This approach has the potential to increase the efficiency of heterojunction solar cells and dramatically reduce their manufacturing costs,” Davis says. “This will hopefully help accelerate the adoption of solar energy by lowering the cost barriers that exist for some consumers.”

UCF researchers on the team also include Aravinda Kar, a professor in and Ranganathan Kumar, a professor of and the associate dean of research and administration for the .

The UCF team will collaborate with their counterparts at the Institute of Energy Conversion, led by research scientist Ujjwal Das.

The project is one of 19 selected for funding from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, and one of eight projects that aim to reduce costs and increase efficiency of panel recycling processes through Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

About the Researchers

Davis joined UCF in 2017 as an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. He is a three-time graduate of UCF, having earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in optics and photonics and his B.S. in electrical engineering. He has joint appointments with the College of Optics and Photonics and the and is a member of the Resilient, Intelligent, and Sustainable Energy Systems (RISES) faculty cluster initiative.

Kumar joined UCF in 2003 as the chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and now serves as the associate dean for research and administration for the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from the ����ֱ�� of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, and his research has been funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Kar is a professor in CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, and he received his Ph.D. from the ����ֱ�� of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research areas include laser-assisted manufacturing and materials processing as well as the design and processing of semiconductor materials and photovoltaic cells. He has won several awards, including the Arthur L. Schawlow Award from the Laser Institute of America (LIA). He is a fellow of LIA, as well as the National Academy of Inventors.

Neighborhoods throughout Orlando could easily find themselves without power, internet and mobility after significant weather events. Effective local response requires a mobile, self-sustaining solution to provide residents with services ranging from device charging and air-conditioned space to laundry to food distribution and even ice for food preservation. Even more, could such a solution also provide educational resources for residents to prepare for future emergencies more effectively?

Kelly Stevens, assistant professor of public administration and the project’s principal investigator, has been working with fellow UCF researchers to bring this vision to life. Together with the City of Orlando and other community leaders, the team has spent the past year conceptualizing what an effective Resilience, Education, and Advocacy Center for Hazard Preparedness (REACH) hub would look like.

Now, they’re ready to put their ideas into action.

The team recently received approval and funding for the project’s second phase from the National Science Foundation’s CIVIC program, which involved presenting the findings from the project’s first phase and successfully demonstrating its feasibility.

Stevens serves on the REACH project team with Yue “Gurt” Ge, public administration associate professor, L. Trenton S. Marsh, urban education assistant professor, Liqiang Wang, computer science professor, and Zhihua Qu, electrical and computer engineering professor, who serve as co-principal investigators. Senior personnel on the project include Maritza Concha, nonprofit management lecturer; Christopher Emrich, emergency management professor; and Kristopher Davis, associate professor of materials science and engineering.

“We are extremely happy with the success of Phase I,” Stevens says. “We had over 300 responses from residents to the community survey we built with our partners, which informed our design process in a way that allowed us to really co-design these hubs with and for the community.”

Stevens says feedback from the community was critical because residents’ responses provided insight into potential resources and amenities for the hub beyond the original concept — from an onboard ice maker to finding a more efficient way to distribute water than simply having water bottles onboard.

The architectural design produced by the team is critical to Phase II of the project, the principal goal of which is to build and test a prototype REACH hub in the communities where it will ultimately be used.

The hub is designed as a trailer chassis-based mobile unit that can be easily deployed in neighborhoods without power or service access. The unit will contain a slew of appliances and usable services for residents to charge their devices, cool off, access the internet and more. The key to the hub is its self-sustaining power, principally supplied through solar panels and supplemented by a conventional generator when under heavy load.

“Right now, we’re working to select vendors that will construct the hub and everything on it,” Stevens says. “We’re looking for someone who can build the hub itself, design the electrical and solar components, install the appliances, and ultimately provide us with a fully realized and working hub.”

Stevens also notes the hub itself is only half the battle. Critical to the project’s value in the community is its educational component, designed to provide affected residents with necessary information about disaster preparedness and recovery before and after a disaster.

“Our ‘blue skies’ curriculum will consist of community-driven, interactive and immersive STEM education learning stations,” says Marsh, who serves as the project’s education lead. “We want to build the programming around what residents recognize; the landmarks they view as signs of strength and resiliency, as well as areas they feel are more vulnerable or susceptible to inclement weather.”

The hubs will also host just-in-time preparedness content for residents to assist with preparation and decision-making ahead of a potential emergency. Evacuation plans and food preparation, Marsh says, are plans the team hopes to focus content on.

Ideally, the team hopes to leverage emerging augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies in developing educational programming to provide residents with in-depth, immersive experiences. The UCF-led HazardAware project also collects data that can provide individual address-based natural hazard and home resilience information tailored to residents’ specific homes.

“We hope that we’ll be able to further leverage our resources at UCF to accomplish these goals with virtual and augmented reality programming, specifically through a potential partnership with the university’s ,” Marsh says.

Once the prototype hub has been built and the educational programming completed, the team will run extensive tests and experiments on the hub’s appliances and power systems to ensure its viability in real-world scenarios. After that, testing will move into the community — where Stevens says the team will really get a sense of how the hub will work.

“We’re going to implement four test deployments in local neighborhoods — three during ‘blue skies’ and one after an actual emergency,” Stevens says. “We want to see how people actually interact with the hub — what they’re interested in, what parts are functional and even what parts aren’t super functional.”

The final step, once testing is completed, is to hand off ownership of the hub to the city of Orlando. The city will be responsible for the deployment, maintenance and future development of the project. Michael Hess, director of the City of Orlando’s Future Ready program, and Ian Lahiff, an energy project manager with the city, serve as senior personnel on the project.

“The city has been our core partner from Day One, so we know they’re in this for the long haul,” Stevens says. “Our team is confident they will be good stewards of the project and its impact on the community.”

The ultimate goal, Stevens says, is to produce an effective and efficient means of increasing resilience in the community.

“When we can show our community that UCF is leveraging its expertise and resources to produce technology — in a quick timeframe and at a very local scale — that can actually be used in the community, that’s the real impact,” she says.

Researcher Credentials

Stevens received her doctorate in public administration from Syracuse ����ֱ�� and joined UCF’s School of Public Administration, part of UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education, in 2017. She is a member of UCF’s Resilient, Intelligent, and Sustainable Energy Systems (RISES) Cluster�����Ի���

Ge joined UCF in 2018 and serves as co-lead of the Urban Resilience Initiative based at UCF Downtown. He has also served on the RISES faculty research cluster since 2021. He holds a doctorate in urban and regional science from Texas A&M ����ֱ��.

Marsh earned his doctorate in teaching and learning with a concentration in urban education from New York ����ֱ�� and joined UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education in 2019 after a postdoctoral fellowship at the ����ֱ�� of Michigan – Ann Arbor.

Qu arrived at UCF in 1990 after earning a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently the Thomas J. Riordan and Herbert C. Towle Chair of UCF’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he is also the founding director of both RISES — a university research center on energy systems — and the multi-institutional ��(�󷡷��ٷ���).

Wang earned his doctorate in computer science from Stony Brook ����ֱ�� in 2006 and joined the UCF Department of Computer Science in 2015.

A total of 18 projects received Phase I funding across 15 universities. UCF received the most awards, with all three housed within the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Dean Michael Georgiopoulos says this speaks to the quality of research produced by CECS faculty.

“I’m proud to see that three of our research teams have been recognized by NASA for their innovative ideas that can shape the future of air travel and space flight,” Georgiopoulos says. “Our college has built a rich history with NASA and this award further solidifies the partnership between our respective researchers.”

All Phase I award recipients will be eligible to compete for Phase II funding and ����ֱ�� Leadership Initiatives and Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) grants. Learn more about the projects below.

Project Title: Multimodal Wireless Piezoelectric Microsensors

Award Amount: $50,000

Researchers: Reza Abdolvand and Hakhamanesh Mansoorzare ’21PhD

The third time was the charm for the Artemis I launch. After two unsuccessful launch attempts due to dangerously high engine temperatures, a crack in the fuel tank insulation and multiple fuel leaks, the rocket finally soared into orbit off the Space Coast.

To prevent these issues from delaying future Artemis missions or other NASA space explorations, a team of UCF researchers is developing a wireless multimodal sensor module that can monitor conditions such as temperature, pressure, acceleration and airflow in real time.

The module, less than a cubic centimeter, will include multiple microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) resonators that will measure those conditions. MEMS resonators are often used for motion sensing, time referencing and signal filtering in electronic devices but show promise in the aerospace engineering field due to their light weight, highly accurate readouts and cost-effective manufacturing.

Although the sensors will be roughly the size of a pencil eraser, they will be able to withstand extreme temperatures since there is no battery or electronics in the device. This will be the first wireless multimodal sensor of its kind.

“Piezoelectric MEMS resonators can detect change in environmental parameters without the need for any auxiliary power source such as battery as they could be powered wirelessly by a remote transceiver unit,” says Reza Abdolvand, professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “This will create a unique opportunity for development of compact and battery-less sensing units that could withstand a harsh environment.”

Once manufactured, the sensing system can be used across various NASA missions to detect dangerous temperatures in critical spacecraft components, monitor the pressure in fuel tanks to prevent leaks, measure the temperature and pressure of lunar regolith, and assess the climate conditions for takeoff.

Project Title: SUPERSAF-SAF for Low Emission Supersonic Transport

Award Amount: $50,000

Researchers: Subith Vasu, Justin Urso, Ramees Khaleel Rahman, Gihun Kim

Supersonic commercial aircraft may be able to fly faster than the speed of sound and reduce the time for transatlantic journeys considerably, but their ultra-fast flights powered by fossil fuels could have a harmful effect on the environment. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Subith Vasu and his team of postdoctoral scholars aim to protect the environment by studying the emissions of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs), a greener alternative made from sustainable resources such as wood residues, fatty acids, fermented sugars and processed alcohols.

Several government agencies have started to test these fuels for emissions.

The team in the Vasu Lab will conduct shock tube experiments to test the NOx and soot emissions of several different SAFs. That data will be used to improve the aviation industry’s and NASA’s current chemical kinetic models that can predict the soot and NOx output of various SAFs in flight conditions.

“The data we collect could significantly improve the current chemical kinetic model and advance the production of combustors for supersonic flights,” Vasu says.

The research is timely, given NASA recently awarded contracts to both Boeing and Northrop Grumman to develop technology roadmaps and concept vehicles for supersonic aircraft. Vasu plans to work with industry partners on this research and to seek additional funding from NASA beyond the MPLAN grant.

Project Title: A CNS Digital Twin Framework for AAM

Award Amount: $50,000

Researcher: Adan Vela

Airplanes and helicopters are often spotted in the sky, but in the future, cargo-loaded drones and passenger-carrying air taxis might become a common sight. Through NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) mission, the organization aims to create a safe and accessible aerial transportation system that can send cargo or people to hard-to-reach areas or even tourist destinations.

However, before AAM can take flight, engineers must address fundamental challenges of the communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) system that supports control, command and collision of these vehicles, as they could face challenges from the low altitude at which they fly or the lack of a human pilot. Buildings or terrain could distort or delay important CNS signals such as GPS or 5G.

To better understand this problem, Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Assistant Professor Adan Vela will develop the CNS-AAM simulation engine, a digital twin framework that mimics the CNS system that the AAM would require. With the aid of computer science students, Vela will create the simulation engine in Python. The resulting framework will allow NASA, the FAA and researchers around the world to digitally develop and test new artificial intelligence algorithms that manage aircraft and CNS technologies, including cybersecurity measures that could protect UAVs from malicious attacks.

If you’re an engineering student interested in working on this project, contact Associate Professor Adan Vela at adan.vela@ucf.edu.

Ethanol fuel cells offer cleaner emissions than fossil fuels and no charging times compared to electric vehicle batteries.

In recent studies published in the journals and Joule, UCF Associate Professor Yang Yang and his team developed new catalysts to make direct ethanol fuel cells last longer and boost their power density to a record level.

Biomass-derived ethanol has been widely used in many industries, including as a liquid biofuel. However, the ethanol must go through a conversion process to become usable fuel and can only be indirectly converted to energy by blending with gasoline to achieve an acceptable conversion efficiency.

Direct ethanol fuel cells, unlike the traditional ways to use ethanol, allow for ethanol to be directly poured in and used for fuel that can be directly converted into electricity at high efficiency. The alcohol-based power source could be used to power vehicles and create nearly noise-less electric power generators, which could benefit both defense and residential usage.

The greater power density of the direct ethanol fuel cells developed in Yang’s lab means more power can be delivered using less space, which is key for practical applications like in vehicles where compact and low-weight power sources lead to more efficient travel.

“Our research enables direct ethanol fuel cells to compete with hydrogen-fuel cells and batteries in various sustainable energy fields, which have not yet been achieved before our invention,” Yang says. “Ethanol is a clean and safe biofuel in the liquid phase, which is much easier and safer for storage and transport than pure hydrogen. Compared to the technology to extract hydrogen from ethanol and then convert hydrogen to electricity, our technology can directly convert ethanol into electricity, so it is an overall positive energy balance and negative emission technology.”

About the Studies

Nature Communications

In this work, the researchers developed a new materials design principle based on the synergistic interface effect in which the combination of different materials leads to enhanced performance beyond the individual components.

For the design, the researchers used active palladium nanoparticles semi-embedded into graphitic shells, which were covered on the surface of cobalt nanoparticles, forming a unique palladium and cobalt nitrogen-graphite carbon structure.

When tested as both a positive electrode (cathode) and negative electrode (anode) catalyst, the structure delivered increased power density and stable operation for more than 1,000 hours, far exceeding current, commercial palladium carbon and other state-of-the-art catalysts, Yang says.

Joule

In this study, the researchers achieved a power density of almost 0.8 watts per square centimeter using a new high-entropy alloy catalyst they designed, setting a new performance record.

The catalyst can be used for both the cathode and anode to overcome challenges with sluggish reactions and high energy needs.

“The results really break the record by enhancing the fuel cell performance by a few folds compared to commercial catalysts,” Yang says.

Next Steps

Yang says the research team is working to further improve the power density of the direct ethanol fuel cells by optimizing the composition of the catalysts and is also exploring ways to commercialize the technology.

Researcher Credentials

Yang holds joint appointments in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center and the , which is part of the university’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member of UCF’s Renewable Energy and Chemical Transformation (REACT) Cluster. He also holds a secondary joint-appointment in UCF’s  and . Before joining UCF in 2015, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Rice ����ֱ�� and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the ����ֱ�� of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. He received his doctorate in materials science from Tsinghua ����ֱ�� in China.

“My goal is to model floating offshore wind turbines and use the model to explore design improvements while concurrently investigating new ideas for control and sensing, a concept that is termed Control Co-Design,” says Tuhin Das, the project’s principal investigator and a professor in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

He is working to build a software that simulates effects of external phenomena, such as waves crashing and changing winds, on the floating platform and the turbine system.

Floating offshore wind turbines are designed to diversify the repertoire of energy resources available in the U.S. and help increase the contribution of renewable energy to power grids as energy demands are steadily increasing.

Das began the work in 2020 with phase one of the project. His initial funding was $772,000. The researcher’s project recently received a boost with a new $3.3 million grant from ARPA-E to continue the research in phase two for the next three years.

“In phase one, our job was to show the kind of benefits we can bring to the modeling and simulation sector,” Das says. “We showed that our results were at par with industry-accepted models and experimental data.”

Das’ software platform will become a product that can be hosted on a university web page and be licensed or commercialized, he says.

“We want this product to be mature enough so that at the end of the next three years, researchers from the industry and academia would be able to use this for advancing research in wind turbines,” Das says.

To date, very few floating offshore wind-turbine farms are in operation, with the first one located off the coast of Scotland.

Das says he hopes that renewable energy companies can use his software to develop their own technology innovations and create more offshore wind turbines.

The research was proposed in 2019 to develop a simulation software that facilitates concurrent design and control of floating offshore wind turbines, ultimately leading to a wider adoption of this technology.

Das says, since then, the software, which uses acausal modeling as the foundational principle, has had rapid growth and has matured in its predictive capability.

“Acausal modeling takes a declarative approach to modeling governing equations, rather than the conventional approach of using assignment statements,” Das says. “Here, the causality is unspecified and determined only during simulation.”

He says the approach is well-suited for modeling physical systems since the resulting models represent the physical structure of the modeled system closely.

“It leads to better reusability of models as compared to those containing assignment statements,” Das says.

A feature of acausal modeling is bidirectional data flow between the ports of connected component models, he says.

In phase one, Das collaborated with researchers at the ����ֱ�� of Maine who have been generating experimental data for the project and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who have collaborated in validating the software.

Das’ team at UCF currently consists of multiple UCF graduate students and one postdoctoral research scholar.

“We are planning to work extremely hard the next few years, with some increase in student involvement, and by involving professionals that are well versed with software development,” Das says.

Das earned his doctoral and master’s degrees, both in mechanical engineering, from Michigan State ����ֱ��. He joined UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, part of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2011.