UCF professors Peter Delfyett and Ronald DeMara are among the 40 fellows elected in the engineering section of AAAS’s 2022 class, which includes researchers at other well-respected and nationally recognized schools like Carnegie Mellon șŁœÇֱȄ, Cornell and The șŁœÇֱȄ of Texas at Austin. Across 24 sections, 550 total individuals were selected as 2022 AAAS fellows and inducted at a celebration on Friday, July 14, in Washington, D.C.

Delfyett and DeMara bring the total number of current UCF leadership and faculty who are AAAS fellows to at least 16, the majority of whom earned the honor at the university, according the latest AAAS data.

Delfyett joined CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, faculty in 1993. His research contributions have been extensive, spanning the underlying physics, device development and application of semiconductor-based mode-locked laser diodes. In 2021, he was UCF’s first sitting faculty member to be inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, joining eight other faculty who were inducted prior to joining UCF.

Delfyett holds several positions at UCF including director of the Townes Laser Institute, Pegasus Professor, university distinguished professor, and university trustee chair professor of optics, electrical engineering, and physics.

“I am incredibly honored to receive this prestigious recognition from AAAS,” says Delfyett. “My accomplishments would not be possible without the tremendous support I have received over the last 30 years from my UCF colleagues, staff and students.

DeMara is a faculty member in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He is a Pegasus Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, joint faculty in the Department of Computer Science and the UCF Digital Learning Faculty fellow. Before joining UCF in 1993, DeMara was an associate engineer at IBM and a visiting research scientist at NASA Ames. He is a registered professional engineer.

DeMara’s research interests are in adaptive and resilient computing architectures with an emphasis on reconfigurable logic devices, evolvable hardware and post-CMOS devices.

“The opportunities provided by the department, college and university levels at UCF, from 1992 through my 30th year at UCF this past December, are support for which I’m deeply indebted,” DeMara says. “Equally, I am indebted to my colleagues as collaborators and mentors.”

In a tradition stretching back to 1874, AAAS Fellows are recognized for their extraordinary achievements across disciplines. The new class of fellows hails from academic institutions, laboratories and observatories, hospitals and medical centers, museums, global corporations, nonprofit organizations, institutes, and government agencies including the U.S. presidential administration.

“AAAS is proud to elevate these standout individuals and recognize the many ways in which they’ve advanced scientific excellence, tackled complex societal challenges, and pushed boundaries that will reap benefits for years to come,” says Sudip Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals.

The 2022 class of fellows of scientists, engineers, and innovators from around the world received a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin, representing science and engineering respectively, to commemorate the honor.

Other current UCF leadership and faculty who have been previously inducted as AAAS fellows include:

• Issa Batarseh (2008; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Pegasus Professor
• Alexander N. Cartwright (2016; State șŁœÇֱȄ of New York)
  President
• Ni-Bin Chang (2011; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Professor
• Louis Chow (2012; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Professor
• Peter Hancock (2012; UCF)
  College of Sciences
  Pegasus Professor and provost distinguished research professor
• Zhihua Qu (2012; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Pegasus Professor, Thomas J. Riordan and Herbert C. Towle chair
• Talat Rahman (2020; UCF)
  College of Sciences
  Pegasus Professor, distinguished professor
• Charles Reilly (2010, UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Assistant vice provost, professor
• Debra Reinhart (2009; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Pegasus Professor and associate VP for Research and Scholarship
• Martin Richardson (2015; UCF)
  College of Optics and Photonics
  Pegasus Professor, Northrup Grumman professor
• Al Sattelberger (2002; Los Alamos National Laboratory)
  College of Sciences
  Courtesy research scientist
• Sudipta Seal (2008; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Chair and professor
• Mubarak Shah (2009; UCF)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Trustee chair professor
• Marwan Simaan (1999; șŁœÇֱȄ of Pittsburg)
  College of Engineering and Computer Science
  Florida 21st Century chair, distinguished professor

Last year, UCF was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) by the U.S. Department of Education. This designation is for higher education institutions that serve more than 25 percent Hispanic/Latino undergraduate students. As of Fall 2019, 28.3 percent (16,848) of UCF’s undergraduate student body identified as Hispanic/Latino.

This is the first HSI grant of its kind, which UCF has been awarded to improve student learning. The designation opens doors to more grants, specifically those which are intended to help underrepresented students.

This grant will aid in the development of a scalable educational ecosystem for building STEM capacity at HSIs, says Pegasus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineer Ronald DeMara, the principal investigator on the grant.

Co-investigators on the grant include Professor Florencio HernĂĄndez and Assistant Professor Laurie Campbell.

“I believe that this grant will be a source of inspiration and encouragement for all underrepresented communities in the region to unite efforts and celebrate achievements as one family.” — Florencio Hernández

DeMara identifies the project’s four pillars of reach as follows:

• determining the effects of graduate and undergraduate faculty, teaching assistants, and peer mentors trained in culturally relevant teaching approaches on learning, engagement and degree attainment;
• evaluating and refining the deployment of an innovative assessment infrastructure to promote student learning, retention, advancement and graduation of students from HSIs;
• creating an automated micro-credentialing tool that would provide access to community internships while developing student self-efficacy; and
• developing culturally relevant curricular materials to train STEM faculty, graduate teaching assistants and peer tutors.

“The Latino population in Central Florida and at UCF will continue to grow, and there is a significant need for equitable representation of Latino talent in STEM,” says Cyndia Muñiz, director of HSI culture and partnerships. “This requires intentional support systems and access to resources that promote professional development in these fields. This HSI grant is a significant contribution to those efforts.”

On a micro-level, this grant benefits those students who struggle to pursue their professional aspirations. UCF is dedicated to providing intentional programs and experiences that  prepare students to thrive in- and outside of the classroom. This includes innovative pedagogy that resonates with Latinx and other underrepresented student populations.

“UCF has made it their mission to facilitate the lives of students like me,” says Ernest González, a civil engineering major and peer mentor. “It was educators and programs funded by initiatives like these that allowed me to get a civil engineering internship from my first semester of my sophomore year all the way to the second semester of my junior year.”

UCF is sixth in the nation for awarding bachelor’s degrees to Hispanic students and aspires to be a national HSI model. Through these new federal grant opportunities, UCF will continue to make strides in research, student support and the economic development of the Central Florida region, Muñiz says.

For co-investigator Florencio HernĂĄndez, the project is an opportunity to change lives.

“I believe that this grant will be a source of inspiration and encouragement for all underrepresented communities in the region to unite efforts and celebrate achievements as one family,” says Hernández.

“I saw so many other disciplines turning to technology for assessments and thought ‘how can this be done for engineering,’” asked Ronald DeMara, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Engineering isn’t something that maps well to online assessment. We’re asking our students to show us how they arrived at an answer, and that’s not something you can readily see through multiple choice alone.”

DeMara’s curiosity led him to develop an integrated testing and tutoring center that’s setting the standard for computer engineering and computer science at UCF and soon could be expanded to other STEM fields across the university.

It’s also what led DeMara to be named the Fall 2017 winner of the Marchioli Collective Impact Innovation Award for advancing teaching and learning in UCF’s Collective Impact Strategic Plan.

In DeMara’s Evaluation and Proficiency Center (EPC), students take their tests through familiar online web portals but upload scratch paper to show how they’ve solved each design problem. Then, they work individually with faculty or graduate teaching assistants to understand what they got wrong and how to improve it. Faculty also can identify patterns from the digitized responses they would have otherwise missed using hand-graded assignments.

“Countless hours used to go into creating assessments, and then grading each assessment by hand,” DeMara said. “It was extremely labor intensive and took time away from the other areas of our job that really affect change and advance learning. Creating the EPC has realigned efforts toward high-gain learning.”

The hours that were previously dedicated to creating and hand-grading assessments are now allocated to tutoring – a win, win for both students and faculty, he adds.

Originally a pilot program in DeMara’s undergraduate electrical engineering class, the EPC is now a 120-seat, college-wide teaching facility that has benefited thousands of students and assists more than 20 faculty members. A new Quality Enhancement Plan grant will help train more faculty in other STEM fields.

Early studies show the EPC’s success. Summative scores are up 6.3 percent when students are engaged in the EPC, and at least one electrical engineering course reduced withdrawals by 25 percent.

Nearly 80 percent of students said the EPC provided a more personalized learning experience, and 90 percent of students agreed the EPC’s methods helped them learn better than conventional homework alone.

“The EPC bolsters UCF’s position to remain at the forefront of instructional technology for high-quality, individualized student experiences in high-enrollment courses,” said Chuck Reilly, associate dean in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “Ron is leveraging his background in computer engineering for the good of our students and faculty by maximizing the use of technology to enhance learning.”

DeMara will be holding a seminar series this spring on scaling online assessment and tutoring across other disciplines, with days and times to be announced.

Nominations for the Spring 2018 Marchioli Collective Impact Innovation Award are due March 9. This award goes to one faculty or staff member each fall and spring semester through 2019 for their innovative initiatives, programs or projects that demonstrate measurable outcomes related to at least one priority metric from the Collective Impact Strategic Plan and can be scaled across the university.