Through a nearly five-year, $943,000-plus grant from the National Institutes of Health, Calarco’s lab is examining how neurons — nerve cells in the brain — and their molecules change when exposed to nicotine and other drugs. The goal is to understand how microscopic changes in the brain eventually influence behavioral decisions, including those associated with addiction.

“We want to understand what’s really influencing the neuron,” says Calarco, who began work on this project in 2024 as a postdoctoral scholar at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Maryland, Baltimore, before joining UCF in January as an assistant professor. “Which component is critical for the neuron function that leads to drug-seeking behavior?”

For this research, Calarco’s lab is focused on the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain involved in reward, learning and behavior.

“I call it a little computer that integrates a lot of signals that come in relationship to reward learning from a lot of other parts of the brain to guide behavioral choices,” she says.

“We want to understand what’s really influencing the neuron. Which component is critical for the neuron function that leads to drug-seeking behavior?” — Cali Calarco, assistant professor

The nucleus accumbens contains multiple types of brain cells, and Calarco’s research examines how individual cell types respond to nicotine and other drugs. Her lab is particularly interested in mitochondria, the structures within cells that produce the energy they need to function. Recent studies suggest mitochondria may also play an important role in drug-seeking behavior.

“Mitochondria have been underappreciated in neurons previously,” she says. “Neurons are incredibly complex cells that do incredibly complex tasks, both electrically and chemically that require a ton of energy, so we knew they were really important. But mitochondria also influence how neurons communicate with each other. They’re super important for gene transcription and translation and for steroid hormone production.”

By understanding addiction at the molecular level, researchers may ultimately be able to develop better treatments for substance use disorder.

“There aren’t that many substance use disorder treatments, and the ones available only work for a subset of people,” she says. “There is room for improvement in nicotine use disorder therapies, and new pathway targets may provide more effective treatments with fewer side effects.”

Nicotine use has persisted even as the products used to consume it have changed. Calarco compares the trend to a game of whack-a-mole, with new nicotine products gaining popularity as older ones decline. While cigarette smoking has declined, consumers now have access to products such as e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches placed between the lips and gum. According to data from the FDA and CDC’s 2025 National Youth Tobacco Survey, nicotine pouch use nearly quadrupled among U.S. youth and young adults between 2022 and 2025.

While her research is focused on nicotine, Calarco says her findings could have implications for other substances and even social media addiction.

Calarco earned her doctorate in neuroscience from Yale şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą before conducting postdoctoral research at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Maryland, Baltimore, where she studied mitochondria and cocaine-seeking behavior. She joined the UCF College of Medicine’s Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences in January 2026.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under award number K01DA061048. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. 

What if an existing drug could be repurposed to treat a rare disease?

That’s the question UCF researchers are exploring with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to find a cure for rare nerve tumors that can cause paralysis, hearing and balance loss.

Led by UCF College of Medicine Pegasus Professor Cristina Fernández-Valle, the team is investigating whether medications already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other conditions could be swiftly repurposed to treat schwannoma tumors.

The researchers have narrowed a field of about 200 potential drugs to 10 of interest, with three emerging as the most favorable targets.

Their goal is to find new treatment options for patients with Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2)-related schwannomatosis. The genetic disorder causes benign tumors to develop on nerves throughout the body and head. As the tumors grow, they can damage nerves responsible for movement and sensation, including those needed to hear and balance.

The disease affects about one in 25,000 newborns worldwide, according to the Children’s Tumor Foundation, with symptoms often appearing during adolescence and early adulthood. When diagnosed in children, the disorder can be severe and may require multiple surgeries during puberty to reduce tumor size and prevent further loss of function. The Children’s Tumor Foundation is supporting UCF’s research with a $280,020 grant.

“The Children’s Tumor Foundation was critical to us because they fund the exploratory research that helps advance science,” Fernández-Valle says. “All of this foundational data is needed to attract the additional support needed to demonstrate a treatment holds real promise.”

Looking for Treatments Beyond Surgery

Schwann cells normally help repair nerves and transmit electrical signals throughout the nervous system. In patients with NF2, however, these cells can form visible tumors that cause chronic pain and neurological issues depending on the affected spinal or cranial nerve.

Current treatments center on surgery and radiation, but removing these tumors can be challenging without damaging critical nerves, including those that affect hearing. Surgery also is not curative, as tumors can regrow.

That’s why the research team is looking beyond surgery to potential drug therapies.

While schwannomas are not cancerous, the researchers believe some cancer-fighting drugs may help patients with NF2.

The research began with an AI model called TxGNN, developed by Marinka Zitnik’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School. The model analyzes data and biological mechanisms across thousands of diseases and FDA-approved drugs to identify potential treatments for a queried disease.

“It essentially generates a map for a disease or condition, like schwannomas, and finds overlaps in targeting similar pathways or related diseases,” says Ethan Hass, a UCF College of Medicine M.D./Ph.D. candidate working in the lab.

Researchers at Sage Bionetworks used the TxGNN model to identify about 200 FDA-approved medications that could potentially benefit schwannoma patients. Fernández-Valle’s team then used an innovative imaging system to observe how each drug affected human schwannoma cells.

Using a camera inside a microscope, the team watched how schwannoma cells in a dish reacted to small amounts of each drug. The most promising candidates – medications currently used to treat diseases as varied as lung cancer and acne – stopped tumor cell growth by impacting different cellular mechanisms.

A Step Towards Personalized Treatment

The research continues.

The UCF scientists are determining therapeutic doses for the most promising drugs using patient-derived schwannoma cells. They’re also studying how the drugs affect the tumor growth pathways at the RNA level.

Ultimately, the researchers hope their findings will help identify drug combinations tailored to individual patients. Complicated and understudied genetic conditions like NF2-related schwannomatosis often require treatments that address multiple targets, Fernández-Valle says.

“I think this work is encouraging, and I’d say like with many cancers, you need a cocktail of drugs to treat it,” she says. “I think what we’re doing here is helping to identify some of the ingredients you might need to make an effective cocktail.”

From Lab Bench to Patient Bedside

The project also provides UCF students with the opportunity to participate in research that can make a real-world impact.

Since joining Fernández-Valle’s lab, Hass says his interest in caring for patients with difficult neurologic conditions has grown.

“As an M.D./Ph.D. student, translation is the magic word for me,” he says. “I absolutely love seeing research that can be brought from the bench to the bedside. I want to be that bridge between patients and research.”

That dedication and her passion for research recently earned Kramer the inaugural Dean Deborah C. German, M.D. FIRE (Focused Individualized Research Experience) Impact Award, an honor named after the founding dean of UCF’s College of Medicine who created the FIRE course, which requires every student to conduct a two-year research project.

German announced earlier this year that she is transitioning from her role and will remain at UCF for a year as an advisor to the president and provost on health affairs. FIRE leaders created the award to honor German’s legacy of scientific discovery as part of medical training, an educational component that makes UCF’s medical school unique nationally.

“I want our students to develop a spirit of inquiry. I want every UCF physician not to be afraid to seek answers to medicine’s unanswered questions.” — Deborah German, College of Medicine dean

“I want our students to develop a spirit of inquiry,” German told Kramer as she presented her with the award. “I want every UCF physician not to be afraid to seek answers to medicine’s unanswered questions.”

After earning an undergraduate degree the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of South Florida, Kramer decided to attend UCF in part because the FIRE course was one reason she came to UCF.

“I wanted to combine research with clinical care,” she says.

Her FIRE project focused on glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with a five-year survival rate of only 5% to 7%, according to the Mayo Clinic. Even if surgery, chemotherapy and radiation initially stop the cancer, it usually returns and becomes stronger. Kramer says she wanted to know why.

With support from her FIRE mentor, Kiminobu Sugaya, head of the College of Medicine’s neuroscience research division, she discovered that extracellular vesicles responsible for cell-to-cell communication may influence non-cancer cells to take on cancer-like properties.

The new award goes to the student whose research shows the greatest potential impact to medicine and/or biomedical research. College of Medicine faculty and fellow students chose Kramer for the award during the FIRE Conference.

“It is our privilege to establish this award in honor of Dean German,” say Robert Hines and Lane Coffee, co-directors of the FIRE course. “When establishing this medical school, she realized the importance of rigorous scientific inquiry, and our students have benefited from — and will continue to benefit from — this course within the curriculum.”

He’s an experienced skydiver, private pilot and scuba diver whose hero since childhood has been moon-walker Neil Armstrong. And now Melchor Antuñano is a UCF Knight.

After 34 years with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — the longest term for any senior executive in the agency’s history — Antuñano has joined the College of Medicine’s team as a professor, and chief technologist and medical innovation officer. In these roles he’ll help design new procedures and technologies to keep astronauts, pilots and airplane passengers safer and help create a new UCF master’s degree in aerospace medicine and a residency program for aerospace medicine physicians. He’ll also teach across UCF colleges.

“Being part of this outstanding visionary team gives me the opportunity not only to help advance the field I love, but also to inspire, educate and mentor the next generation of physicians, scientists and innovators.” — Melchor Antuñano, UCF aerospace medicine medical innovation officer

Antuñano says a career in aerospace medicine has given him the “opportunity to continually learn, adapt and contribute to a specialty defined by innovation, exploration, and discovery.”

“Joining the UCF College of Medicine represents a new and exciting chapter in that journey,” he continues. “Being part of this outstanding visionary team gives me the opportunity not only to help advance the field I love, but also to inspire, educate and mentor the next generation of physicians, scientists and innovators.”

He is the newest leader to join UCF’s new Center for Aerospace and Extreme Environments Medicine , a multidisciplinary center includes faculty experts in medicine, engineering, computer science, psychology, arts and educational leadership who will work together to research and develop new technologies for keeping space travelers healthy as well as soldiers on military missions, deep sea explorers, and mountain climbers.

“Dr. Antuñano brings to UCF an extraordinary combination of operational experience, scientific leadership, innovation and a lifelong commitment to aerospace medicine,” says Emmanuel Urquieta, vice chair for aerospace medicine and director of CASEEM. “For more than three decades, he helped shape aerospace medicine and safety at the national and international levels. Having someone of his caliber join our team is transformative as we build a comprehensive aerospace medicine program that integrates clinical care, education, research and technology development.”

A Resourceful First Responder Before Medical School

Born in Mexico City, Antuñano had two dreams as a child: to be a doctor and fly airplanes. Before entering medical school at the National Autonomous şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Mexico School of Medicine, he volunteered with the Red Cross and the country’s rescue squad as a paramedic, rescue worker and EMT. He couldn’t afford to buy a red emergency light for his car. So he made one using a pot.

“My parents always instilled in my sisters and me the importance of doing our best, persevering in the face of adversity, planning ahead and learning from our mistakes,” he says. “I learned from my parents the importance of being kind, fair and respectful to everybody.”

He learned about aviation medicine during medical school and volunteered at the Mexican Government’s National Center of Aviation Medicine, where he learned about aviation physiology (including altitude chamber operations), human factors in aircraft accident investigation and pilot medical certification.

Impact Fueled by Taking Initiative

Next came residency. Antuñano says he came to America because the only civilian aerospace medicine residency program was at Wright State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio.

He learned about this program by writing letters to senior U.S. federal government officials — including then President Ronald Reagan — inquiring where to pursue postgraduate training in aviation medicine in the U.S. He was accepted into the residency.

“That opportunity allowed me to pursue my professional dream and meet aerospace medicine physicians from all over the world,” he says.

Antuñano also earned a master’s in aerospace medicine at Wright State. His research was using a portable head cooling system to protect U.S. Air Force personnel from heat exposure. He built his lab in the kitchen of the residents’ lounge. He turned up the heat, then added oil and air heaters to create a thermal chamber. His experimental subjects were his classmates. He earned the Aerospace Medical Association’s Young Investigator Award for his initiative.

After residency, he received a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship from the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. After that, he was hired as a contract scientist for the school to work on personal cooling technology for individuals wearing nuclear, biological and chemical protective suits.

Antuñano joined the FAA in 1992 and served as manager of the Medical Education Division and the Medical Certification Division at the agency’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) in Oklahoma City. The institute is responsible for medically certifying that the nation’s pilots are physically fit to fly, training the physicians who perform the physical exams in the U.S. and in 90 countries worldwide, and conducting safety-related aerospace medicine and human factors research. He became CAMI’s director in 2001 and retired earlier this year as the longest serving director in history.

Steering the Future of Aerospace Medicine at UCF

“A leader has the responsibility to make more leaders,” he says. “Look for stars in the making — encourage them, support them and help turn them into future leaders.” — Melchor Antuñano, UCF aerospace medicine medical innovation officer

As the commercial space industry expands and humans prepare for longer missions to the moon, Mars and beyond, UCF’s College of Medicine is charting a new frontier in healthcare. The goal: explore how factors such as microgravity, radiation and isolation impact the human body in space and how that knowledge can drive innovation into diagnostics, treatment and disease prevention for patients on Earth.

As part of that effort, the aerospace medicine team is developing courses for students across the university and building a lab that will design, create and test the next generation of medical equipment to keep space travelers healthy. The team just opened the UCF Aerospace Medicine Clinic to provide medical certification exams for astronauts and pilots across the region.

Antuñano says he is excited about the future and his role in advancing aerospace medicine research while training the next generation of aerospace physicians.

“A leader has the responsibility to make more leaders,” he says. “Look for stars in the making — encourage them, support them and help turn them into future leaders.”

Medicine can treat infections after people get sick, but UCF infectious disease expert Mollie Jewett is seeking to halt Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, which causes Lyme disease, in its tracks without relying on general antibiotics. Her goal: “starve” the bacteria of the nutrients they need to function before they spread through the human body.

Jewett, professor and head of the Immunity and Pathogenesis Research Division at UCF’s College of Medicine, is supported by a recently renewed five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

She is entering a third consecutive federally funded research cycle with $513,314 received this year. Jewett’s research builds upon more than a decade of discoveries that have narrowed the search for ways to stop B. burgdorferi from triggering Lyme disease, one of the nation’s most common vector-borne diseases. Her team includes a UCF undergraduate who occasionally struggled to walk because of pain from Lyme disease.

The disease is spread by blacklegged ticks that become infected after biting mammals or birds carrying the bacteria. The ticks are so small, humans often don’t notice they have been bitten. Symptoms include fever, chills, headache and fatigue, which often are misdiagnosed as a virus or the flu. Even after treatment, Lyme disease patients can face complications including nervous system and heart issues, severe fatigue and arthritic pain.

The disease is most commonly found in Maine to Virginia and in the upper Midwest but is spreading as suburban growth enters wildlife areas. Florida reports few cases of Lyme disease annually, but travelers who go to endemic areas like New England are at increased risk.

A New Approach to Battle Borrelia

UCF researchers are focused on how B. burgdorferi manages to survive and thrive as it spreads in ticks and mammals to humans.

“The bacteria need to adapt to two different environments, and so we want to know how it does that,” Jewett says. “We’re looking at what the bacteria eat and what it needs to survive. In our lab, we call Borrelia a wimpy pathogen because it can’t make a lot of the nutrients it needs on its own, and so it scavenges what it needs from wherever it is.”

The first iteration of the NIH grant allowed the scientists to screen all of the bacteria’s genes that might be important for the infection. With the second grant, Jewett targeted three genes that appeared to play a role in spreading the infection from a bite on the skin to other parts of the human body.

“One of these three genes we found is important to the ability of the bacteria to consume riboflavin. We want to target this gene and see if we can starve the bacteria.” — Mollie Jewett, UCF infectious disease expert

Now they have focused on riboflavin, commonly known as vitamin B2, after discovering that B. burgdorferi salvages the vitamin from each host to sustain itself.

“One of these three genes we found is important to the ability of the bacteria to consume riboflavin,” Jewett says. “We know that riboflavin is a precursor for other cellular activities that are important to the metabolism of the bacteria. Essentially, we want to target this gene and see if we can starve the bacteria.”

If their theory is successful, it could lead to therapies specific to B. burgdorferi that would prevent successful bacterial infection by limiting its riboflavin uptake. An advantage of such potential treatments would be that patients don’t have to take general antibiotics that can also harm the body’s good bacteria and increase risks for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The UCF team is collaborating with Baylor şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą scientists to trace exactly how riboflavin is used by the bacteria.

Students Driving Discovery

Biomedical sciences doctoral student Anna Schulz ’25MS played a key role in pinpointing specific ways the bacteria use riboflavin to generate energy. She served as first author on a recent publication examining these processes, and says she’s looking forward to growing as a researcher in this next phase.

“As a first author, I took more ownership over the experiments and the writing process,” Schulz says. “[Jewett] was really great about letting me lead the project as a student. Borrelia is so unique, and there’s still so much we don’t know, and that’s what keeps me engaged with this research.”

“… I couldn’t treat it until years after I got infected. So, I truly care about finding new treatments for Lyme disease.” — Grace Easterling, UCF biomedical sciences student

Third-year biomedical sciences undergraduate Grace Easterling says she was drawn to Jewett’s lab because she previously developed Lyme disease and suffered tremendous joint pain. She was determined to find a way to protect others.

“It was something that, because we live in Florida, wasn’t caught early because it’s not as common,” Easterling says. “I struggled for a long time to get diagnosed, and I couldn’t treat it until years after I got infected. So, I truly care about finding new treatments for Lyme disease and understanding the bacteria.”

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01AI099094. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

“I saw what she means to her community,” says Dostal, who comes to UCF from the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Washington. “And I wanted to do the same thing for my community.”

Dostal was one of 120 new UCF College of Medicine students who received their white coats Monday in a traditional celebration that welcomes them as partners in healthcare.

Chosen from 5,422 applicants, the 120 new M.D. candidates received their undergraduate degrees from Yale, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Duke, Case Western and Emory in addition to UCF. They include scientists, artists, musicians, athletes, global volunteers and EMTs.

Monday was the 18th White Coat Ceremony in the history of the medical school, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In his welcome, UCF President Alexander N. Cartwright described “what began as a bold vision on undeveloped land in Lake Nona has grown into a thriving Academic Health Sciences Campus and a community focused on improving lives.”

And he credited that growth to Deborah German, vice president for health affairs and founding dean, who has announced her transition from both roles. Monday was her last White Coat Ceremony.

“Dr. German helped transform an ambitious vision into the college you join today,” he told students, parents, faculty and staff. “Because of her leadership, hundreds of physicians have begun their careers here, thousands of patients have been served, and new partnerships, discoveries, and opportunities have taken shape across Lake Nona and our state. Dr. German, your remarkable legacy will always hold a special place at UCF.”

The Good Doctor

For every White Coat Ceremony, German has conducted the first class of medical school called “The Good Doctor – A UCF Tradition.”

She asks first-year students to imagine the person they love most in the world is seriously ill with an undiagnosed condition. What are the traits they want to see in the doctor caring for their beloved? As students name attributes, German writes each word on a blackboard that is displayed in the College of Medicine atrium for the entire year.

The class of 2030 suggested 38 traits, including humble, trustworthy, dedicated, knowledgeable, ethical, determined, compassionate, resilient and innovative.

“This is your contract with your faculty, friends, family, community and each other,” German said, pointing to the board. “Always remember, The Good Doctor lives in each of you. With the guidance of the faculty and your own hard work, you will become The Good Doctor.”

Inspired to Care for Others

As a UCF undergraduate, Nelson Jones earned the Order of Pegasus, the university’s top student honor. Today he is a physician-in-training. Both of his parents are nurses, and he described how their care of others – especially in communities of need – inspired him. So did the opportunities UCF provides.

“I’m feeling extremely grateful and excited,” he said after receiving his white coat. “This university has built me into the person I am and will continue to build me into the physician I strive to become.”

Vivian Silva-Dallenbach graduated from the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of South Florida with degrees in biomedical sciences and astronomy. She chose UCF for medical school because of the college’s new aerospace medicine program. She’s researched how space flight affects the human body.

“Once I saw that UCF has an aerospace medicine program, I knew it was a match,” she says. “I’m particularly interested in women’s health and how we can provide specialized care for female astronauts.”

Dev Patel, another UCF alum, says his dreams are inspired by the College of Medicine’s founding dean. “I would like to take a page out of German’s book. She started with almost nothing to work with and she built something amazing here. So as we have such a long road in front of us, I’m hoping to follow in her footsteps and even have a fraction of the impact she did.”

Studies have shown the condition affects nearly one in four women worldwide and is linked to dozens of potential disorders involving multiple organ systems. Yet many healthcare providers receive only limited training in diagnosing the source of pain, often leaving patients facing years of uncertainty, repeated testing and ineffective treatments before receiving the right diagnosis.

A yearlong collaboration between a UCF physician-scientist and two biomedical sciences undergraduate students aims to create a better environment for doctors and patients to reach an understanding together. Biomedical sciences students Sarah Gabriela Nieto Chavarro and second-year Juliana Dimetry interned with Georgine Lamvu, a UCF College of Medicine volunteer professor of obstetrics and gynecology, to transform years of international research into a practical tool to help clinicians evaluate patients more quickly and confidently.

The team is developing an AI-assisted clinical questionnaire application that guides physicians through a patient’s symptoms and identifies which organ systems and conditions should be examined. Rather than replacing a physician’s judgment, the application compiles patient histories quickly to help guide physicians toward making a clearer diagnosis.

From International Research to a Practical Tool

Despite the prevalence of CPP, many healthcare providers lack specialized training in diagnosing the underlying condition because symptoms often overlap with gastrointestinal, urinary, musculoskeletal and reproductive disorders.

“We’re hoping that this can become easy to use and can take a detailed medical history that could take an hour to get through down to just 5 to 10 minutes.” — Georgine Lamvu, volunteer professor and Orlando VA practitioner

“We’re hoping that this can become easy to use and can take a detailed medical history that could take an hour to get through down to just 5 to 10 minutes,” says Lamvu, who practices at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Orlando and directs its gynecological surgery fellowship program and center. “That allows physicians to have a more efficient evaluation and spend more time with the patient.”

The center is a pioneering program designed to address the growing demand for specialized gynecologic care among women veterans. As the number of women veterans using VA healthcare services is expected to increase significantly, this fellowship and center aims to train highly skilled gynecologists to meet their healthcare needs within the VA system and beyond.

As part of that initiative, this project builds upon nearly five years of work led by Lamvu alongside an international coalition of physicians, researchers and patient advocacy groups.

Their research culminated in an international consensus called R U MOVING SOMe, an acronym that categorizes the broad range of symptoms associated with chronic pelvic pain and is the basis of the AI-tool Lamvu and her team developed.

Finding a Definitive Diagnosis

Lamvu says the team translated the clinical research into the logic behind a chatbot-style application that asks fewer than 20 targeted questions. Physicians enter a patient’s symptoms and history into the program, which then suggests the organ systems and conditions most likely responsible for the pain, helping clinicians focus their evaluation.

The team plans to expand the application beyond patient questionnaires by incorporating physical examination findings into the same scoring system. Ultimately, the researchers say they hope it can be used in any practice that serves women, but it may be years away from being realized.

“Physicians just need a way of processing all the information that comes from the patient to narrow it down to a differential diagnosis,” Lamvu says. “Right now, it’s all too common to see healthcare workers panic a little when they hear a patient has chronic pelvic pain because it’s considered a complex condition.”

An Inspiring Internship

The students sifted through years of research and developed the logic for the AI in less than a year. Given the complexity of CPP and the vast amount of data, Lamvu says she is impressed by Dimetry and Nieto Chavarro.

“They learned valuable lessons, like if you see a problem that seems unsolvable to everyone else and that directly and negatively impacts patients, you have the power to do something about it,” she says. “These are experiences not every student gets to have, especially this early on in their life.”

Dimetry says she challenge intrigued her, and that she was drawn to the project for the opportunity to be at the forefront of medicine and emerging technology.

“I think that adapting the field of medicine to AI in ways such as this project is necessary to keep medicine growing and advancing,” she says. “I also saw how impactful this project could be if done successfully, and I wanted to be a part of that and make a difference,”

For Nieto Chavarro, who graduates Summer 2026, the experience showed her how to use technology to help deliver compassionate patient care.

“On a personal level, this experience has taught me to keep going and to never give up,” Nieto Chavarro says. “All of this has ultimately reinforced how essential it is to genuinely listen to patients so they feel safe and understood”

Students in the , with support from the American Association of Venezuelan Engineers (AAVE), are producing 3D-printed orthopedic devices — including splints, neck braces and animal immobilizers — for people and pets injured in the disaster.

The initiative, called Bracing Venezuela, began after BMES leaders contacted Greco Pinzón, president of AAVE. Pinzon’s dad, who has been volunteering in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, connected the students with physicians on the ground who identified the types of orthopedic devices most urgently needed.

“… before we knew it, we had a campuswide humanitarian project taking shape.”

“From there, everything snowballed,” says Jannah Barakat, a mechanical engineering major and president of BMES. “We started test printing, organizing volunteers, building a print tracker, reaching out to other student organizations, and before we knew it, we had a campuswide humanitarian project taking shape.”

Since launching the effort, BMES has produced more than 350 devices that have been shipped to clinicians in Venezuela. Smaller items, such as finger and wrist splints, take only a few hours to print and are manufactured flat so they can be easily transported. Once they arrive, clinicians soften the material with hot water and mold each device to fit each patient. Larger devices, such as neck braces and animal leg braces, are printed in multiple sizes and can take up to 10 hours to complete. With volunteers printing from across UCF and beyond, multiple devices can be produced simultaneously.

Bracing Venezuela has received support from Mohsen Rakhshan, an assistant professor in and BMES faculty advisor, who opened his lab’s 3D printer for the project. While many volunteers are engineering students, faculty members, UCF alumni and 3D-printing hobbyists have also come forward to help.

“One of the coolest things about this project has been watching people from so many different backgrounds come together around one goal,” Barakat says. “Whether you’re printing a brace, packing a box, donating supplies or simply helping us spread the word, every contribution helps get these devices into the hands of the people and animals who need them.”

“I hope this initiative becomes a model for how engineering students can quickly mobilize to respond to humanitarian needs.”

Those interested in joining the initiative don’t need to own a 3D printer. BMES supplies filament to volunteers who have printers, while others can still make an impact by donating materials, connecting the organization with additional volunteers or helping spread the word.

For Barakat, Bracing Venezuela demonstrates what’s possible when engineering students come together for a greater good.

“I hope this initiative becomes a model for how engineering students can quickly mobilize to respond to humanitarian needs,” she says. “Whether it’s supporting communities after natural disasters, helping [less fortunate] populations locally or partnering with organizations in other countries, I’d love to continue using engineering as a way to make healthcare more [widely available] wherever it’s needed.”

To join the Bracing Venezuela initiative, email Jannah.barakat@ucf.edu.

UCF has the most inductees among universities in Florida in the 2026 American Academy of Nursing Class of Fellows, which includes influential healthcare leaders from across the U.S. and around the world. The induction ceremony will be held on Oct. 10, 2026, during the organization’s annual Health Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.

Fellows are selected through a rigorous nomination and review process, and recognized for substantial contributions to improving health outcomes. With the new cohort, the American Academy of Nursing will have more than 3,600 fellows worldwide dedicated to advancing nursing leadership, innovation and science.

The four new inductees, whose collective works have advanced care across the lifespan from pediatrics to older adults, will join 11 fellows of the American Academy of Nursing on faculty at UCF’s College of Nursing.

Jean Davis ’19PhD

Nursing Associate Professor Jean Davis is advancing public health through her interdisciplinary scholarly work. By working with a collaborative team of public health, psychology, kinesiology and artificial intelligence experts, she has developed and continually improved upon a physical activity habit-forming intervention that tailors cues for movement and optimizes responses to ultimately improve outcomes. This intervention is improving health for veterans and pregnant women, and influencing providers, educators and health systems. Davis is also dedicated to advancing nursing science through active mentorship of UCF nursing students and early career scholars.

Jacqueline LaManna ’13±Ęłó¶Ů

For more than three decades, Family Nurse Practitioner and Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Program Director Jacqueline LaManna ’13±Ęłó¶Ů has made substantial contributions to advancing diabetes care and self-management education as a provider, educator and researcher. Her scholarly works have been cited more than 250 times and are included in the American Diabetes Association Standards of Care in Diabetes shaping care for pregnant women. In addition, LaManna has helped establish national frameworks for telehealth education for nurse practitioner graduate students that have been accessed more than 4,000 times.

Kimberly Navarro

Lecturer Kimberly Navarro is a certified nurse midwife and board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner who has pioneered community health initiatives to increase healthcare access and improve quality of care for children, adolescents, and pregnant women in the U.S., Guatemala, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. As program director of the Hispanic serving healthcare professionals graduate certificate at UCF, Navarro has increased access to the program, strengthened curriculum, and mentored future healthcare professionals. In addition to her faculty appointment Navarro maintains a clinical practice as founder and president of a technology-driven midwifery-led birth center in Orlando.

Kaitlyn Rechenberg

Associate Professor Kaitlyn Rechenberg is advancing standards of behavioral healthcare for children and adolescents living with complex chronic medical conditions through design and implementation of technology-driven interventions. She pioneered the development and validation of the first precision instrument to differentiate diabetes-specific anxiety symptoms from general anxiety symptoms. She also created a mobile health application to deliver tailored mindfulness training to adolescents living with diabetes. Her scholarly work has been cited in seminal position statements by both the American Diabetes Association and International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes and has been cited nearly 800 times across 26 countries.

After years of research and development led by experts at UCF in collaboration with researchers from universities across the U.S. and in Europe, the Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA) has reached two major milestones: powering its first full-scale study to address one of virtual reality’s most persistent barriers to adoption and awarding its first use grant to enhance immersive learning and information across industries.

VERA, a platform funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is the first, large-scale system for extended reality human subjects research and designed to advance the speed, scale and scope of immersive research. The platform enables immersive researchers to design, deploy, and manage virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) studies with remote participants therefore significantly improving the quality of the science, while reducing costs, lowering logistical barriers and expanding participant reach.

“No one has built anything like VERA before,” says Pegasus Professor Gregory Welch, lead principal investigator on VERA. “The team was really starting from scratch to create this national platform, integrating AI technologies and establishing policies and procedures that will produce methodologically rigorous behavioral data.”

“We’re excited for VERA to now start to run in an open beta mode and reach these two firsts,” Welch continues.

Accelerating Understanding of Cybersickness

For its first major large-scale study leveraging remote participants, VERA is helping researchers address one of the most persistent challenges in virtual reality: cybersickness.

Cybersickness occurs when symptoms such as nausea, dizziness and discomfort are caused by a mismatch between visual motion in a headset and the user’s physical motion. Associate Professor of Computer Science Gerd Bruder, who is an affiliate researcher in the Institute of Simulation and Training, is leading the research study in collaboration with other UCF researchers and external partners.

“Understanding who is susceptible to cybersickness is critical to improving VR accessibility, making VR more comfortable for all users and enabling broader adoption across research, education and industry,” Bruder says.

Early data collection highlights the powerful capabilities of the VERA platform to accelerate VR research at an unprecedented scale.

In just 15 cumulative days, VERA had more than 250 participants complete the full study protocol. In comparison, the original in-lab study collected data from just 30 participants and in traditional VR research settings, studies with hundreds of participants often require several months to complete.

For the study, each participant experiences a controlled VR rollercoaster ride on their own headset and provides sickness ratings at periodic intervals, a pre- and post- exposure questionnaire, an in-VR visual acuity assessment, and continuous head-tracking data. Each session is completed in approximately 30 minutes at home.

“The sectors where VERA can make an impact are expansive, from healthcare to workforce training to accessibility to learning.”

Enrollment is ongoing with a target of 2,000 participants. Preliminary analyses already suggest meaningful individual differences in how quickly and severely participants experience cybersickness.

“VERA was built to study problems like this with a combination of speed, scale and experimental complexity not previously possible,” Welch says. “The sectors where VERA can make an impact are expansive, from healthcare to workforce training to accessibility to learning.”

Groundbreaking Immersive Learning Project

For the first project selected in its Use Grant program, VERA is supporting innovative research to study how different immersive technologies engage learners in different ways. The study will help inform how to leverage emerging technologies in education, cultural institutions, public engagement and more.

The grant was awarded to the San JosĂ© State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą School of Information Library Technology Integration Lab in Silicon Valley and New Media Learning, one of the largest providers of virtual reality programming in public libraries.

The project will support a collaborative virtual reality research environment integrated with VERA with participants from across the U.S. in public libraries, universities and other sites.

Researchers will collect behavioral and interaction data including attention patterns, object interaction, navigation pathways, movement, clicks, engagement metrics, and time-on-task, supplemented by surveys and participant feedback. The resulting research environment will serve a scalable prototype for future applications to make immersive learning experiences more accessible to communities worldwide.

A distinguishing feature of the project is the active involvement of San JosĂ© State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą undergraduate and graduate students from the School of Information who will work alongside faculty researchers and technology partners to gain hands-on experience.

“Being selected as the first VERA Use Grant recipient is both an honor and an extraordinary opportunity,” says Anthony S. Chow, professor in the San JosĂ© State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą School of Information and founder of the Library Technology Integration Lab. “Through this collaboration, we hope to generate research that helps libraries, educators, museums and community organizations leverage virtual reality to address some of society’s most important challenges while creating meaningful research opportunities for students.”

“We are excited to welcome San JosĂ© State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛ĄÂ and New Media Learning as the first recipients of a VERA Use Grant,” Welch says. “Their expertise in libraries, immersive learning, public engagement and emerging technologies makes them ideal partners for demonstrating how VERA can accelerate impactful XR research. We believe this collaboration will help establish new models for studying learning, engagement, and information behavior in immersive environments.”