To further tap into the hidden gems of research produced by faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, UCF is initiating a new program backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) with mentoring from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The $6 million, NSF-funded interdisciplinary project, led by Ivan Garibay, an associate professor in the will create a UCF Venture Lab that supports budding entrepreneurs through the commercialization process and establishes a newly organized research umbrella at the university.

The funding for the UCF Venture Lab is provided through NSF’s Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program, housed in the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. UCF is one of 18 U.S. universities to receive funding through this newly established program.

“NSF endeavors to empower academic institutions to build the pathways and structures needed to speed and scale their research into products and services that benefit the nation,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan in a release. “The Accelerating Research Translation program in NSF’s new Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate identifies, and champions institutions positioned to expand their research translation capacity by investing in activities essential to move results to practice.”

The UCF Venture Lab will train and enable faculty, graduate students and postdocs to identify and launch viable businesses based on their novel research. It will provide guidelines on business development, match UCF researchers with relevant industry partners and, for a select few, provide funding through the NSF ART grant. The entity will be modeled after the business startup program at Georgia Tech, which will provide mentorship during the development phase.

“UCF’s world-class faculty are preparing students to work and lead in the industries of tomorrow, and we are grateful to the NSF for their support in enabling us to speed up research, discovery, and entrepreneurship,” says UCF President Alexander N. Cartwright. “Working with Georgia Institute of Technology, which will serve as a mentoring institution, we look forward to expanding pathways for ideas, products, and programs that make positive impacts on society and keep pace with the speed of innovation.”

Garibay says after comparing notes with Georgia Tech, the project team realized they would benefit from a Venture Lab dedicated to the commercialization of UCF research.

“We plan to create that infrastructure here at UCF and hope to accelerate the growth of these businesses,” Garibay says.

Community and Societal Impact

Georgia Tech will serve as a mentoring partner for UCF’s Venture Lab development. Keith McGregor, the founder of the Georgia Tech VentureLab, will serve as one of the mentors to the UCF team, which includes co-principal investigators Carolina Cruz-Neira, a professor in the ; Cameron Ford, an associate professor in the , Svetlana Shtrom, the director of the ; and Winston Schoenfeld, interim vice president for research and innovation. The ����ֱ�� of Florida will also collaborate on the project, providing input that will help UCF adapt Georgia Tech’s model to the Florida ecosystem.

Locally, the program is expected to have a positive impact on the Orlando area.

“Central Florida is mostly a service-based economy,” Garibay says. “Our median salary is below the nationwide average. The UCF Venture Lab will foster creation of technology companies, which will generate high-paying jobs and will attract a lot of growth to this area.”

The program will also provide pathways for local industry to partner with UCF researchers. Organizations such as DeepWork Capital, the Entrepreneurs Alliance of Orlando and the National Security Innovation Network have already agreed to mentor the UCF entrepreneurs and to participate in the ART project advisory board.

ART Seed Translational Research Projects

Multiple seed translational research projects will be selected for funding through the ART program. The first project, led by Professor Guifang Li of the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL), will establish a prototype receiver capable of high-speed space-to-ground laser communication that resists atmospheric turbulence. Once the prototype is developed, Li and his team plan to test the project at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. Potential clients for the receiver include Blue Origin, OneWeb Technologies and SpaceX.

The second project is led by Center for Research in Computer Vision Assistant Professor Yogesh Rawat. He plans to develop a prototype software that can detect human activities shown in live video streams while ensuring that private information isn’t exposed. The software would be used in surveillance systems to identify emergency situations or potential threats to public safety so that law enforcement or first responders could act quickly to prevent harm.

Other seed translational research projects will be selected through a university competition that will commence next August. UCF researchers from all disciplines will be encouraged to apply.

Education Through Action

UCF graduates like Wolfe, Drake and countless others were able to launch their businesses with the aid of the skills they developed at UCF as well as the encouragement they received from UCF researchers and business development programs. To keep the pipeline of Knight-trepreneurs flowing, the NSF ART grant will enhance UCF’s educational offerings in entrepreneurship.

The College of Engineering and Computer Science and the College of Business Administration courses already offered in this topic would expand to allow graduate students and postdocs to take the courses, allowing for a greater diversity of knowledge, skill and perspective in the classroom.

The goal is to instill an entrepreneurial skillset in the next generation so they can better qualify for jobs in changing industries or launch and grow their own business ventures, says Ford, who is also the executive director of the Blackstone LaunchPad and the director for the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

“The careers that our students are going into are dynamic,” Ford says. “We’re seeing a lot of changes and disruptions to the industries they work in, so our students need to be adaptable and resilient. They can add value to the companies they work for if they can learn to solve novel problems and execute initiatives. It’s not enough to innovate solutions – the goal is to deliver innovations to those who need them, improving social and economic wellbeing in the process.”

Garibay says that, for engineering students in particular, learning about entrepreneurship can change their whole mindset.

“I think it’s life-changing,” Garibay says. “Entrepreneurship is something we’ve done for a long time and the feedback that I get back from students is that it’s transformative.”

UCF Innovate

The NSF ART program doesn’t just allow UCF to create a business hub and enhance graduate education – it also establishes a new research umbrella for the university called UCF Innovate. This enhanced infrastructure will bring together the Office of Technology Transfer, the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Business Incubation Program along with the developing Venture Lab. UCF Innovate will be overseen by Schoenfeld, who leads the Office of Research.

“UCF has been consistently ranked as a leading technology-generating institution with a strong entrepreneurial spirit among faculty and students,” Schoenfeld says. “The NSF ART program leverages this to drive new levels of technology translation that ensures strong societal benefit from the innovation across UCF.”

Shtrom says that through the ART program, the Office of Technology Transfer will strengthen and enhance the university’s commercialization infrastructure to transform promising research results into products that solve pressing problems and improve people’s lives.

“The NSF funding will allow us to dedicate resources toward cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset and culture at UCF, increasing the number of startup companies launched to commercialize university technologies, and growing funding and licensing revenue to support and expand the research enterprise,” Shtrom says. “UCF is committed to nurturing and sustaining this virtuous cycle of research and innovation to maximize impact for UCF, Central Florida, and the nation.”

The finding comes from an examination of posts labeled controversial on social news aggregation site Reddit. To perform the study, the researchers analyzed more than 47,000 posts about cybersecurity in a Reddit dataset that was collected by the Computational Simulation of Online Social Behavior (SocialSim) program of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Researchers found that these posts were seen by nearly twice the number of people and traveled nearly twice as fast when compared to posts not labeled controversial. The findings were published recently in the .

Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the U.S. A post is labeled controversial by a Reddit algorithm if it receives a certain number of polarized views, or a moderator can label a post with any number of comments as controversial.

The posts analyzed in the study included topics that wouldn’t be considered traditionally controversial but were labeled as so by Reddit, such as a personal computer giveaway offer.

The research is important because it shows that disagreement may be a powerful way to get people to pay attention to messages, says study co-author Ivan Garibay, an associate professor in UCF’s .

However, he advises caution to those inducing disagreement in their social media posts.

“There may be an incentive in terms of influence and audience size for a social media user to consistently include controversial and provocative topics on their posts,” Garibay says. “This benefits the person posting the messages. However, controversial comments can be divisive, which could contribute to a polarized audience and society.”

Reddit’s definition of a controversial post, which tends to depend on increasing numbers of both likes and dislikes, is different than the traditional advertiser’s definition of a controversial post, which would contain truly provocative or taboo messaging, says Yael Zemack-Rugar, an associate professor in UCF’s .

“To give this idea life, you may like a recent ad for Toyota, and I may not,” Zemack-Rugar says. “This will not make it controversial. But if the ad featured Colin Kaepernick, as the Nike ad did in 2018, after he recently refused to recite the national anthem during his games, now we are talking controversial. There is an underlying tone that is much deeper and more meaningful.”

Reddit posts are also more akin to word-of-mouth communication since they are user generated and not paid advertising, she says.

The study’s findings are consistent with past research that has found that traditional controversy increases the spread of word of mouth and discussions online, especially when contributions are anonymous, as they somewhat are on Reddit, Zemack-Rugar says.

Of the more than 47,000 posts, approximately 23,000 posts were labeled controversial, and about 24,000 were noncontroversial.

The researchers found an association between controversially labeled comments and the collective attention that the audience paid to them.

For the controversial posts, there were more than 60,000 total comments, whereas for the noncontroversial posts, there were less than 25,000 total comments.

A network analysis examining the reach and speed of the posts, showed that nearly twice the number of people saw controversial content compared to noncontroversial content and that controversial content traveled nearly twice as fast.

The researchers limited posts in their analysis to those that had at least 100 comments.

Jasser Jasser, a doctoral student in UCF’s , and the study’s lead author, says the findings highlight the need to better understand why the content labeled in Reddit as controversial spreads.

“The next step in this work is to analyze the language used to induce such controversy and why it brings the attention of the social media users,” Jasser says.

Study co-authors were Steve Scheinert, a senior solutions specialist with a professional services company and Alexander V. Mantzaris, an assistant professor in UCF’s .

The study was funded with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Garibay received his doctorate in computer science from UCF. He joined UCF’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, part of UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2016.

Social media has become a dominant form of communication for individuals, and for companies looking to market and sell their products and services. Properly understanding and responding to customer feedback on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms is critical for success, but it is incredibly labor intensive.

That’s where sentiment analysis comes in. The term refers to the automated process of identifying the emotion — either positive, negative or neutral — associated with text. While artificial intelligence refers to logical data analysis and response, sentiment analysis is akin to correctly identifying emotional communication. A UCF team developed a technique that accurately detects sarcasm in social media text.

The team’s findings were recently published in the ��.

Effectively the team taught the computer model to find patterns that often indicate sarcasm and combined that with teaching the program to correctly pick out cue words in sequences that were more likely to indicate sarcasm. They taught the model to do this by feeding it large data sets and then checked its accuracy.

“The presence of sarcasm in text is the main hindrance in the performance of sentiment analysis,” says Associate Professor of engineering Ivan Garibay ’00MS ’04PhD. “Sarcasm isn’t always easy to identify in conversation, so you can imagine it’s pretty challenging for a computer program to do it and do it well. We developed an interpretable deep learning model using multi-head self-attention and gated recurrent units. The multi-head self-attention module aids in identifying crucial sarcastic cue-words from the input, and the recurrent units learn long-range dependencies between these cue-words to better classify the input text.”

The team, which includes computer science doctoral student Ramya Akula, began working on this problem under a DARPA grant that supports the organization’s Computational Simulation of Online Social Behavior program.

“Sarcasm has been a major hurdle to increasing the accuracy of sentiment analysis, especially on social media, since sarcasm relies heavily on vocal tones, facial expressions and gestures that cannot be represented in text,” says Brian Kettler, a program manager in DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O). “Recognizing sarcasm in textual online communication is no easy task as none of these cues are readily available.”

This is one of the challenges Garibay’s is studying. CASL is an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to the study of complex phenomena such as the global economy, the global information environment, innovation ecosystems, sustainability, and social and cultural dynamics and evolution. CASL scientists study these problems using data science, network science, complexity science, cognitive science, machine learning, deep learning, social sciences, team cognition, among other approaches.

“In face-to-face conversation, sarcasm can be identified effortlessly using facial expressions, gestures, and tone of the speaker,” Akula says. “Detecting sarcasm in textual communication is not a trivial task as none of these cues are readily available. Specially with the explosion of internet usage, sarcasm detection in online communications from social networking platforms is much more challenging.”

Garibay is an associate professor in . He has several degrees including a Ph.D. in computer science from UCF. Garibay is the director of UCF’s Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Initiative. He is also director of the master’s program in data analytics. His research areas include complex systems, agent-based models, information and misinformation dynamics on social media, artificial intelligence and machine learning. He has more than 75 peer-reviewed papers and more than $9.5 million in funding from various national agencies.

Akula is a doctoral scholar and graduate research assistant at CASL. She has a master’s degree in computer science from Technical ����ֱ�� of Kaiserslautern in Germany and a bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological ����ֱ��, India.

DARPA awarded $6.3 million to a team led by Associate Professor Wingyan Chung of the ����ֱ��’s Institute for Simulation and Training, and another $6.2 million to a second team led by Assistant Professor Ivan Garibay, director of UCF’s Complex Adaptive Systems Laboratory in the College of Engineering & Computer Science.

It’s part of a new SocialSim program from DARPA that’s been in the works for more than a year. The federal agency has contracted with nine teams from universities and research institutes across the country to gain a deeper grasp of social network dynamics. UCF was the only institution to have two teams funded.

The researchers are tasked with developing accurate and scalable simulations to provide DARPA with a better understanding of online social behavior and its evolution. Potential applications include countering the spread of misinformation by terrorists and malicious hackers, profiling online populations for social research, and forecasting online sales and activities for e-commerce.

“Different users take advantage of social media and other media channels to spread their ideas,” Chung said. “By accurately modeling and simulating such activities, our techniques will enable better understanding of such behavior and inform the development of policies and strategies.”

Chung’s team will develop a suite of models, tools and techniques to illuminate socio-behavioral properties and network interactions in large online populations. He will collaborate with co-principal investigator Elizabeth Mustaine, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology, who specializes in social theories, criminology and cyber stalking.

Chung, who is director of the Institute for Simulation and Training’s Cyber Intelligence Lab, has done extensive research on social media analytics, covering such topics as border security, e-commerce business intelligence and the spread of infectious disease. Mustaine has researched cyber bullying, and supervises graduate students to conduct this research.

Garibay’s team will create and train thousands of AI “agents” to think and act like humans on social media networks. Garibay compared it to a hurricane prediction model, but instead of a storm’s path and speed, it would predict how far and how fast propaganda would spread on social networks.

“DARPA considers how information is propagating in social media an issue of national security. The core area of interest for DARPA is how foreign states can affect the opinion of people in the United States,” said Garibay, of the  Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems.

The AI agents created by Garibay’s team have varied traits that govern how they would interact with one another online. Some are more emotional, some more rational, some more social, and together they will react like humans do on social media. When scaled up with the help of massive computing power, the AI network will be able to simulate how quickly information of different types will spread. Armed with a better understanding of propaganda propagation, researchers could potentially counter it more quickly.

“This will be like a test bed – a human-like network modeling with human-like behavior that replicates the phenomenon that occurs in real social networks,” Garibay said.

Garibay and his colleagues used a similar approach in earlier research, developing a model to determine what led to the population decline of the Anasazi people in the Southwest in the last millennium.

Garibay’s UCF team on the DARPA project includes Associate Professor Gita Sukthankar of the Department of Computer Science; Stephen M. Fiore, professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Simulation and Training; and Assistant Professor Alexander Mantzaris of the Department of Statistics.

While UCF is the lead institution on both teams, others are subcontracting. Researchers from the ����ֱ�� of North Carolina Charlotte, Florida Institute of Technology and Cornerstone Software Solutions, a company in Central Florida Research Park, are subcontracting for Garibay’s team. And researchers from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition and the State ����ֱ�� of New York at Albany are subcontracting for Chung’s team.

Recruiting cutting-edge scientists and engineers from Florida’s universities and research centers around the state, is now accepting applications until May 29, for admission into its fall program which begins August 24, 2015.  The 10-week program will provide selected research teams with first-hand knowledge about entrepreneurship, while exploring and validating the commercial opportunities surrounding their invention.

The NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) is the agency’s signature effort to assist teams of university scientists and post-doctoral or graduate students to venture outside of their laboratories and into the marketplace to test assumptions about the commercial market opportunity.  The primary goal of NSF  I-Corps program is to provide participants with the tools to connect lab discoveries to market and societal needs.

“The I-Corps program is the NSF’s conduit for researchers that have a technology or an invention to validate the commercial opportunity.  Over a ten-week period teams get out of the lab to conduct about 100 interviews in order to test the validity of their assumptions about the market need and opportunity. Teams decide whether or not to pursue the path of additional funding and company formation at the conclusion of the program,” said Ivan Garibay, UCF I-Corps Program Director.

UCF I-Corps teams generally consist of an Entrepreneurial Lead (EL), Principal Investigator (PI) and Industry/I-Corps Mentor.  These aspiring entrepreneurs will participate in an immersive, hands-on program designed to teach them how to test their ideas, gauge feasibility, understand market demand, examine competition and develop mutually beneficial partnerships to help transition their ideas into profitable enterprises.

Once teams complete the UCF I-Corps program, the path to commercial market continues with opportunities for funding in NSF’s national I-Corps program and SBIR/STTR grant funding as well as tapping into the entrepreneurial ecosystem within UCF and the community.

UCF has one of the nation’s best innovation and entrepreneurial networks and is one of 36 universities nationwide, leading an I-Corps Site program. NSF has also established regional I-Corps Nodes, located in such innovation hotspots as Washington DC, New York City, Michigan, San Francisco and Boston.

A nationally certified teaching team oversees the teams and coaches them toward success. UCF’s certified teaching team consists of a mix of experienced entrepreneurs, investors and UCF faculty including Thomas O’Neal, Oscar Rodriguez, Michael O’Donnell, Cameron Ford, Ivan Garibay and David Metcalf.  The entire team earned its certification via training and support by Jerry Engel. Engel, professor at Berkeley (����ֱ�� of California), is National Faculty Director of the NSF I-Corps program and co-creator of the Lean Launchpad methodology and curriculum.

For more information about UCF I-Corps, please visit or contact Ivan Garibay at ivan.garibay@ucf.edu or via phone at 407-882-1163.

The first community affiliate to offer the acclaimed National Science Foundation’s (NSF) I-Corps Lean Startup program to high-growth entrepreneurs in Central Florida is Starter Studio.

Starter Studio was launched by Gregg Pollack, founder of Envy Labs and Code School, as a passion project to help tech startups in Orlando thrive. Starter Studio provides education, mentorship, legal and financial resources, networking opportunities, and the right culture to help innovative solutions grow.  Ninety-day accelerator classes are offered for aspiring tech startups.  Currently, the third class is preparing for graduation.

“The partnership with UCF gives our Starters additional support to grow their new venture.  Participating in the UCF I-Corps program opens up the opportunity to apply for the National NSF I-Corps program as well as SBIR/STTR grants,” said Pollack, founder of Starter Studio.

As a Community Affiliate, organizations such as Starter Studio, will receive training and support from UCF on delivering a tailored version of the Lean Startup education, as well as access to software and other tools for providing the various program elements.

“We are pleased to have Starter Studio as our first Community Affiliate.  This is the first step towards our goal of offering this proven program through a premier network of affiliates to university researchers and technology entrepreneurs throughout the region,” said Ivan Garibay, program director for UCF I-Corps.

Local area entrepreneurs selected for the program, receive I-Corps seed grant funds along with other legal and financial services offered by the Community Affiliate.  The I-Corps funds are applied to business, market, or early product prototype development.   UCF was awarded the NSF I-Corps grant in November 2014 for a three year timeframe.  Plans are in process to support the program through the network of affiliates beyond the period of the grant.

“This is an example of UCF as ‘America’s Partnership ����ֱ��’.  We have shown that contributing like this to the entrepreneur ecosystem in Central Florida benefits the entire economy through increased high-wage jobs and wealth creation”, added Thomas O’Neal, founder/director of UCF I-Corps and the.

Meanwhile, Starter Studio is preparing for its on April 14th where each team from its accelerator class will showcase their work.

Teams include:

For more information about UCF I-Corps, please visit or contact Ivan Garibay at ivan.garibay@ucf.edu or via phone at 407-882-1163.  Information about Starter Studio visit .

UCF Campus Event
Thursday, January 29th
Networking lunch: 12pm – 1:30pm
Live Oak Event Center
Who’s Invited: Students, Faculty and Community
Event is Free!  Seating is limited so register today!
Register at 

Industry Mixer/Reception
Thursday, January 29th
5:30pm – 8pm
at Canvs (Exchange Building) – located at 101 S. Garland Ave., Orlando, 32801
Who’s Invited: Aspiring Entrepreneurs, Industry Mentors
Event is $15 per person 
Register at 

The Lean Startup movement promotes a non-traditional classroom approach to entrepreneurial learning.  This hand-on methodology requires students to propose and test their hypotheses in “real world” scenarios.  Industry mentors review findings with students, helping them make appropriate adjustments to their innovation and/or launch plan in preparation for bringing their ideas to market. Lean Startup emphasizes engagement and experiential study.

“We consider it a great privilege to welcome Jerry Engel to Central Florida,” says Ivan Garibay, Ph.D., Program Director for UCF I-Corps.  “Having the co-founder and leader in the Lean Startup movement here to spend time with students, faculty, aspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders is an incredible opportunity.  We look forward to learning from him as we develop and shape our own I-Corps program.”

For more information or to RSVP for either event, please visit  or call Ivan Garibay at ivan.garibay@ucf.edu or via phone at 407-882-1163.

UCF has been selected by the National Science foundation (NSF) to provide Florida’s first implementation of one of the agency’s flagship programs, an I-Corps Site. The I-Corps Site’s purpose is to foster innovation among faculty and students, promoting regional coordination and linkages in the innovation ecosystem, as well as develop a National Innovation Network.  The primary goal of NSF I-Corps is to provide ����ֱ�� scientists and researchers the program, process, and resources to investigate and validate the commercialization of their science.  UCF has one of the nation’s best innovation and entrepreneurial networks and is one of 15 universities nationwide that is leading an I-Corps Site program.  The UCF I-Corps program is administered by the university’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), a department that consolidates and coordinates UCF’s major innovation and entrepreneurship support activities.

Jerry Engel is a leader in the Lean Startup movement. Collaborating closely with Steve Blank, chief architect of the Lean LaunchPad method, he helped develop the curriculum and co-authored the LaunchPad Educators Guide. He has taught the Lean LaunchPad at U.C. Berkeley and across the U.S. as National Faculty Director of the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, which has trained over 300 teams of the nation’s leading scientists. Internationally he is supervising programs in Asia and Europe. Additionally, as Faculty Director of a highly rated faculty development program in the U.S., conducted a Berkeley, Stanford and Columbia, he has trained several hundred faculty in the method. Professor Engel is a graduate of the Wharton School at the ����ֱ�� of Pennsylvania and the 2010 recipient of the NCIIA – Olympus Corporation Lifetime of Educational Innovation Award.

Highlights of the October 11 workshop included prospects of using complexity sciences towards building computational models of nanoparticle, cell interactions by Ivan Garibay, director of the Complex Adaptive Systems Laboratory at the Institute and research information systems director at UCF’s Office of Research and Commercialization. Heiko Enderling of the Moffitt Cancer Center gave an introduction to agent-based models of cancer and Aniket Bhattacharya, associate professor of Physics at UCF led a discussion about potential models for particle-cell interactions.

Laurene Tetard of UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center discussed nanoparticle/cell interactions and Ozlem Garibay from UCF’s Office of Research and Commercialization examined funding opportunities and high-performance computing resources. Qun Huo and Alexander Balaeff of UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center discussed next steps for broader awareness in nanoparticle functionalization and multi-scale simulations in cancer research.

“We view cancer as a complex biological system and recognize the potential in studying how nanoparticles and nano-robots could be engineered to affect these systems,” Garibay said.

“The synergy at UCF is a perfect platform to create a strong, innovative and interdisciplinary program to advance cancer research,” Tetard said.

Founded in 1982 as a research unit of UCF, IST is an internationally recognized research institute that focuses on advancing human-centered modeling and simulation technology and increasing our understanding of simulation’s role in training and education. The institute in 2012 celebrated 30 years of M&S research achievement.