Modeling and Simulation Professional Science MS Degree offered

The Modeling and Simulation Professional Science MS degree program is a two-year course of study offered entirely online for working professionals by UCF in partnership with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Worldwide Campus. The two-year course will begin in October 2009. In subsequent years the series will begin with UCF's Fall term. The program consists of 12 courses (36 hours) that provide a strong combination of business and technical classes. See the Modeling and Simulation PSM Degree Webpage for more information...

Robotics Club takes First Place at Virginia Autonomous Surface Vehicle Competition

UCF's Robotics Club came back from the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International/Office of Naval Research second international surface vehicle competition much wiser and $6,000 richer. The club was one of eight university teams that competed in Virginia Beach, VA during the June 18-21 event held at the Founders Inn...more

IST researcher invited to study high performance computing in Japan

Institute for Simulation & Training Research (IST) Associate Ravi Palaniappan will spend this summer in Japan promoting UCF and IST research in wireless networking and high performance computing, courtesy of the Japan Society for Promotion of Sciences (JSPS)...more

Partnership III Building Construction Begins

Contractors began site clearing for the third in the series of UCF buildings in the Central Florida Research Park dedicated to partnerships among UCF and the Department of Defense. The five-level office and research lab facility will be shared by the Institute for Simulation & Training, other UCF departments and components of the defense community...more

Denise Nicholson, Ph.D., featured in DoD newsletter spotlight

Director of IST's ACTIVE Lab (Applied Cognition and Training in Immersive Virtual Environments), Dr. Nicholson is featured in the "Spotlight" section of the inaugural issue of the Office of Secretary of Defense HSCB program newsletter. HSCB, or Human Social Culture Behavior Modeling, is a DoD research and development program established to develop a science base and technologies that help DoD and government understand and operate effectively in the culturally diverse "human terrain." Go to page 13 of the newsletter.

Robotics Club scores a third place at SoutheastCon 2009

The IST-sponsored UCF Robotics Club came home with a third place win at the IEEE SoutheastCon robot competition held March 5 -8 in Atlanta. Competition was among 37 teams required to build a small autonomous "Recycling Robot" capable of locating, collecting and sorting different cans and glass and plastic bottles... more

IST has tripled the capacity of its high performance computing cluster, boosting its computational speed to about 6.6 TFlop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second – a worldwide standard for measuring computer speed). The system’s nearly 1.3 terrabytes of total memory now is about one to two thousand times that of a typical desktop. University departments and industry partners can reach the cluster online and with high-speed interconnects obtain near-real-time results... more

Three-volume Handbook of Virtual Environments for Training and Education provides
comprehensive coverage of requirements for effective training

IST's Denise Nicholson, PhD and co-editors Navy Commander Dylan Schmorrow, PhD and Navy Lieutenant Commander Joseph Cohn, PhD recently announced availability of their three-volume The PSI Handbook of Virtual Environments for Training and Education (LC Card #2008027367), a comprehensive collection of chapters by numerous experts in the many different domains whose integration is a must for effective training and education in virtual environments... more

IST researchers rank high on UCF "millionaires" list

The university's Office of Research and Commercialization annually recognizes researchers who have brought in $1 million or more in funding during the year. Seven of IST's researchers garnered a total of $15.97 million. The amount was second only to the College of Education whose five awardees received $18.65 million.

Denise Nicholson, with close to $4.2 million, was IST's top earner and second highest on the university-wide list of 33 "millionaires." She is followed on the IST list by Ernest Smart ($2.8 million – 3rd UCF-wide), Brian Goldiez ($2.5 million – 4th UCF-wide), Brian Plamondon ($1.7 million – 8th UCF-wide), Randall Shumaker ($1.4 million), Eduardo Salas ($1.1 million), Tammi McClellan ($1.1 million) and Eileen Smith $1.1 million. In some cases a percentage of these awards went to co-investigators in other university departments.