The focus of the research behind the patent is to create a cost-effective, high-efficiency and sustainable method for manufacturing nano-materials to enhance energy and chemical production. Yang says he hopes that this will in turn address the current limitations of traditional, expensive fabrication techniques.

“The idea stemmed from the challenge of making solar hydrogen production more efficient and affordable,” says Yang, a member of the .����According to Yang, the materials were tested and validated for their application as catalysts. The recent findings were also published in the Royal Society for Chemistry.

A Catalyst for Innovation

The technology uses particles designed to optimize the generation and production of hydrogen and oxygen that serve as catalysts for energy production. ����Traditional catalysts only respond to ultraviolet light, however this new development can harness a broader spectrum of sunlight.

To achieve this, Yang engineered particles within precise nanoscale structures that were grown inside titanium oxide (TiO₂) cavities, or light traps. These cavities can capture and control a wider spectrum of light, including sunlight, ultraviolet and near-infrared.

With this method, the particles can efficiently harvest solar energy through a process known as localized surface plasmon resonance. In simple terms, when light interacts with specialized nanomaterials it creates a synchronized ripple of mobile electrons — thus creating usable energy.

“In daily life, this could be implemented in solar-powered hydrogen generators for clean fuel in homes, cars or industrial settings, helping reduce reliance on fossil fuels and carbon emissions,” Yang says.

Shaping the Future of Energy

The research and industrial applications of this patent could expand as the technology develops, Yang says. By tailoring the composition of Yang’s particles, the catalysts can be integrated into technologies like electrolyzers used in seawater splitting, which is a process that aims to produce green hydrogen. Because the catalyst can be produced using renewable materials, it may reduce the environmental footprint of research and industry by limiting the need for freshwater use.

“There’s a strong potential to optimize plasmonic tunability, [or how metallic nanostructures interact with light], by engineering the composition of our engineered particles,” says Yang, “This platform also inspires new designs for full-spectrum solar utilization and could be adapted for CO₂ reduction or nitrogen fixation.”

This technology is fully available for licensing. Interested parties can contact the or reach out directly to Yang Yang at Yang.Yang@ucf.edu for more information.��

Funding for the research was provided by UCF through a startup grant No. 20080741. STEM, EELS, and XPS data analysis was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Early Career Research Program under award No. 68278. The technology was developed by faculty and students from the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering, and NanoScience Technology Center.

Color isn’t just about looks — it plays a vital role in how we communicate, protect ourselves and interact with the world. Debashis Chanda, a researcher and professor at UCF’s , has developed a new material that can change color dynamically in response to external stimuli like temperature, which creates a new possibilities for materials and devices to respond, adapt and be reconfigured in real time.

Most colors in commercial and industrial products come from pigments, which absorb, reflect light and fades over time. However, structural colors, which are found in animals like octopuses, use nanoscale structures to control how light reflects. Inspired by this efficient approach, Chanda has been researching how to create more vibrant, angle-independent colors without relying on chemical pigments for years.

His latest development addresses the challenges with dynamically tunable color, complex designs and manufacturing challenges of structural colors, which may make it easier to commercially manufacture these materials. The concept holds immense promise for applications in thermal sensing, advanced textile engineering, camouflage and reconfigurable displays.

The research was recently published in , an esteemed scholarly journal by the National Academy of Sciences. It also includes contributions from researchers Aritra Biswas ’21MS ’24PhD, Pablo Cencillo-Abad, Souptik Mukherjee, Jay Patel ’25�����Ի� Mahdi Soudi ’25.

How it Works

Chanda’s approach uses phase modulation of a multilayer stack composed of a phase-changing material and a high-index material on a reflective surface. When the temperature shifts, the way light moves through the material changes, causing the surface color to change as well.

The technology combines several novel features:

• Large area fabrication without complex lithography, which is an expensive patterning method
• Reversible color change
• Precise control over dynamically customizable color
• Broad dynamic range that spans a large portion of visible color space

Earlier methods of developing structural color often relied on expensive electrochromic materials, mechanical actuation or photonic crystals, all of which are hindered by limited tunability, complex fabrication steps, lithographic patterning requirements and angular sensitivity. Achieving dynamic color switching in the visible range remains a significant challenge.

“The reliance on angle-dependent resonances or patterned nanostructures limits practical integration and scalability,” Chanda says. “Overcoming these barriers is critical for advancing tunable structural color platforms toward real-world applications in flexible electronics, displays and wearable systems.”

This new method can be used for creating large textiles, complex surfaces, and temperature-sensitive consumer product labeling.

Mimicking Nature for Dynamic Colors

The design draws inspiration from animals like octopuses, which change color by rearranging tiny structures in their skin rather than producing new pigments.

Chanda’s team created a layered design that can change color without being affected by viewing angle or direction of the incident light. It uses a very thin layer of VO₂, a material that changes phase from semiconductor to metal with temperature, placed on top of a thick aluminum layer to form a resonating cavity to trap and reflect light in a controlled way.

Pigment colorants control light absorption through a material’s electronic properties, which means each color needs a new molecule and isn’t affected by the surrounding environment. Structural colorants, like those found in octopuses, work differently: they control the way light is reflected, scattered or absorbed based on the geometrical arrangement of nanostructures, making them sensitive to changes in their surroundings.

“Harnessing the reversible phase transition, the platform offers precise control over dynamically tunable color, opening avenues for applications in temperature sensing, displays, tunable colored fabrics and many other consumer products,” Chanda says.

The bilayer structure is made using magnetron sputtering to deposit the phase-change material, a process that uses plasma to deposit thin film. It also uses electron-beam deposition to deposit the metal layer, which melts material with a focused electron beam to create precise coatings. This combination allows the structure to be applied to flexible substrates, making it suitable for large-scale production and wearable applications.

Looking Ahead

Chanda says the next steps of the project include further exploration of color space and roll-to-roll fabrication to improve its viability as a commercial and defense-related platform.

“This platform holds promise for a robust, scalable and dynamically tunable coloration platform with broad applicability, while demonstrating a proof-of-concept product that highlights its commercial and defense-related application potentials,” Chanda says.

Licensing Opportunity

For more information about licensing this technology, visit .

Researcher Credentials

Chanda has joint appointments in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, the Department of Physics, and the College of Optics and Photonics. He received his doctoral degree in photonics from the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined Ů��AV in Fall 2012.

This material is based upon work supported by the NSF Grant no. ECCS-1920840 and NGA Grant no. HM0476-20-1-0010. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF/NGA.

Early diagnosis of infectious disease is key to slowing outbreaks and improving treatment outcomes. However, current diagnostic techniques are time-consuming, require specialized equipment and are dependent on trained personnel, which hinders accessibility in resource-limited areas.

A Low-Cost, Smartphone-Enabled Diagnostic Platform

UCF researcher Debashis Chanda, a professor at UCF’s , has developed a self-assembled colorimetric biosensor that can be read using a regular smartphone. The cost-effective platform delivers sensitive and robust detection without needing any sophisticated equipment. The research was recently published and featured as a cover article in Nano Letters, an esteemed scholarly journal published by the American Chemical Society.

Additional researchers on this study include Mahdi Soudi — a physics doctoral student and the lead author of the publication — as well as Caitlin Beech, Pablo Cencillo-Abad, Ishani Chanda, Ángel David Torres Palencia, Amir Ghazizadeh, Pamela Mastranzo-Ortega, Freya Mehta, Javier Sanchez-Mondragón and Abraham Vázquez-Guardado.

The technology combines several novel features:

• Wafer-level fabrication without complex lithography
• Label-free assay format
• Smartphone-enabled readout for portable and low-cost analysis
• Broad dynamic range that spans physiologically relevant IgG concentrations with high reproducibility

Together, these attributes distinguish this approach from earlier colorimetric sensors and showcase its strong potential for real-world applications.

“The sensor works well because of its simple design: a layer of aluminum nanoparticles on a thin optical cavity. This setup makes it very sensitive to small molecular interactions. The sensor uses structural color — like the vivid colors seen in some species — created by the arrangement of two colorless materials. The color can change based on shifts in the local refractive index caused by molecular binding, which alters the resonance and the color seen on the surface. These color changes can be measured using a smartphone,” Chanda says.

Inspired by Vivid Colors

Based on such bio-inspirations, Chanda’s research group innovated a colorimetric sensor, which utilizes the nanoscale structural arrangement of colorless materials to create colors and corresponding changes in colors to sense molecules.

While pigment colorants control light absorption based on the material’s electronic properties — meaning every color needs a new molecule and isn’t sensitive to the surrounding environment — structural colorants control the way light is reflected, scattered or absorbed based purely on the geometrical arrangement of nanostructures and are sensitive to change of medium.

Such structural color-based sensors are environmentally friendly, relying only on metals and oxides, unlike other sensors that use artificially synthesized colorants made from complex, toxic molecules.

Designed for Real-World Use

To demonstrate its translational potential, the research team also developed a smartphone application that processes user-captured sensor images and estimates analyte concentration, eliminating the need for bulky optics, spectrometers or trained personnel. This biosensing strategy paves the way for low-cost, rapid, user-friendly diagnostics, empowering individuals to combat infectious diseases and outbreaks more effectively.

“This work introduces a novel platform that addresses the limitations of conventional diagnostic techniques such as complexity, the need for specialized equipment and lack of accessibility,” Chanda says. “Here, we’re not limited by such stringent resource requirements. A smartphone can be used as a diagnostic tool for most point-of-care needs.”

In addition to its diagnostic utility, the platform is highly scalable. More than 20 independent deposition runs supporting over 50 assays showed consistent sensor performance, with yields above 90% and defects mainly due to handling rather than fabrication variability. Because the fabrication relies on thin-film deposition and self-assembly instead of costly lithography, the sensors are inexpensive to produce and compatible with wafer-scale production, making them ideal for disposable point-of-care diagnostics.

Future Research

Chanda says the next steps of the project include further exploration of sensor sensitivity and selectivity aspects to improve its viability as a commercial biochemical sensing platform.

“This biosensing platform holds promise for addressing unmet needs in precise, rapid antibody detection and represents a significant step toward the development of robust, field-deployable biosensors capable of meeting diagnostic requirements in resource-limited and decentralized healthcare environments,” Chanda says.

Licensing Opportunity

For more information about licensing this technology, visit .

Researcher Credentials

Chanda holds joint appointments in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, the Department of Physics and the College of Optics and Photonics. He received his doctoral degree in photonics from the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined Ů��AV in Fall 2012.

OOC is built on a miniature glass wafer with human cells that mimics the function of human organs. The chips contain tiny channels lined with living cells, allowing researchers to study how tissues respond to medications, infections or disease in ways that traditional lab methods cannot.

College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Swaminathan Rajaraman and doctoral student Surbhi Tidke have built on that concept by measuring transepithelial electrical resistance, or TEER — a key indicator of how well cells form protective barriers.

By integrating TEER-on-a-chip, researchers can monitor barrier integrity in real time, offering a noninvasive tool for diagnosing and studying diseases that affect tissues such as those in the lungs, intestines or brain.

“Using TEER-on-a-chip, we measure resistance by sending a very small, harmless current across a layer of cells to see how much the cells push back against it,” Tidke says. “If they are packed tightly together, the current has a harder time getting through, which means the cell layers are healthy. If they are loose or leaky, the current passes more easily, showing there is some problem.”

Researchers say a loose or leaky response can point to damage, disease or other problems on the tissue and this technology can aid personalized healthcare solutions.

“It’s like a mini lab, where pharmacists or doctors will be able to see in real time how a particular medication or treatment causes the individual’s sample cells to react,” she says.

Rajaraman, who is also a faculty member in , explains that one of the unique aspects of their research is the transparent electrodes, or wires to facilitate real-time measurements — without blocking the view.

“If you have transparent electrodes, which is what we’ve been able to create, now, you can get simultaneous real time electrical measurements as you’re imaging these things optically as well,” says Rajaraman. “It’s like a multi-modal sensor that can do a lot of different things in the electrical and optical domains.”

From Lab to Industry

The TEER-on-a-Chip technology is funded by the Multi-functional Integrated System Technology (MIST) Center, a research consortium under the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation. The MIST Center links university researchers with industry partners to commercialize their research.

“Thanks to Surbhi’s amazing dedication, we can define things almost on a manufacturing scale now, which is very unique in academia,” Rajaraman says. “We’ve been working with WPI for a few years now, and they have been able to translate this rather quickly into something which is highly scalable, because all the development, designs and testing that we did here in the lab.”

Tidke’s work on this project was recently published in IEEE Xplore and credits the facilities and resources at UCF, like Rajaraman’s , the College of Engineering and Computer Science cleanroom and core facilities available at NanoScience Technology Center and Materials Characterization Facility in aiding the development and testing of TEER-on-a-Chip.

“Using all the fantastic facilities at UCF enabled rapid prototyping of TEER chips and testing,” Tidke says. “Dr. Rajaraman’s lab is like a mini company outside of a real company and he’s like a very active CEO. We’re all a group of people coming together with one motive to positively contribute to advances in human health.”

Rajaraman, who co-founded a startup and joined UCF after working in the industry, explains it’s not just the discovery but the delivery of the solutions he and his team help propagate.

“It is extremely important that these kinds of discoveries and new inventions translate very quickly from academic setting into industrial setting,” he says. “So that’s something that we think we’re really facilitating.”

Researcher Credentials
Rajaraman is a tenured academic and a successful entrepreneur. He is an associate professor in the NanoScience Technology Center and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UCF. Prior to his academic appointment, he has worked in the MEMS industry and co-founded Axion BioSystems Inc., a world-leader in high-throughput Microelectrode Arrays (MEAs) and MEA systems. He has published more than 100 articles and holds 35 patents and applications.

Tidke is a doctoral student in electrical engineering at UCF who is working on the integration of novel nano materials and electrical sensors into various Organ-On-Chip platforms. She earned her Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Biomedical Engineering from Mumbai University, India, in 2014 and went on to complete her Master of Technology (M.Tech) in Electrical Engineering at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India in 2016. Prior to her doctoral studies, Tidke worked as a research associate at Temasek Laboratories, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, where she contributed to device fabrication and high-frequency characterization of mmWave components. She has authored 5 peer-reviewed publications.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1939050. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Lunar dust particles are sharp and abrasive due to the lack of atmosphere gradually dulling their surfaces, leading them to potentially damaging critical lunar equipment or causing respiratory issues for astronauts. Managing lunar dust (also known as regolith) and safeguarding astronauts or sensitive equipment on the moon isn’t as simple as sweeping it up with a broom and pan.

That’s why a team of NASA-funded UCF researchers is pioneering a new nanocoating to passively mitigate the effects of lunar dust, protect equipment and ultimately extend future lunar missions.

“The dust particles on the moon are very sharp, very sticky and very toxic,” says Lei Zhai, director of the NanoScience Technology Center and project lead. “Right now, the efforts we have seen are based on studies here on Earth, and so we want to have a more complete picture of the interactions and guide the design on how to mitigate dust using a simulated lunar environment.”

UCF’s research team aims to conduct testing as true to a lunar environment as possible through modeling and the use of a simulated regolith in a vacuum chamber to mimic lunar conditions and exclude the effects of Earth’s atmosphere. The goal is to understand how lunar dust interacts with surfaces and which surface properties, such as surface structures, polarity and electrical conductivity, are key to repelling the dust, even in complex lunar charged particle and light radiation environments.

“It’s a really new, novel way to approach this. Lunar dust is one of the most significant problems that we have for going to the moon, especially for long duration stays.” — Adrienne Dove, professor of physics

“We’ll put our engineered coatings or surfaces into the vacuum chamber with lunar simulants and study how the dust interacts with the surfaces in the simulated lunar surface environment,” Zhai says. “There is also strong irradiation on the moon, so we will also introduce irradiation sources in the setup. We also will use a specific instrument called an atomic force microscope to study these specific interactions at the dust particle level.”

Repeated experimentation will allow Zhai and his team to adjust surface structure, hardness, conductivity and other properties to further fine tune the surface coatings.

“With that data, we can design specific surface structures for effective dust mitigation,” he says. “My role is to provide the surface. Then I’ll give this surface to Dr. [Laurene] Tetard who will carry out the atomic force microscope studies and also Dr. [Adrienne] Dove who has a vacuum chamber and irradiation sources.”

Dove, who is a professor of physics and the department chair, says she’s excited to work on this project.

“It’s a really new, novel way to approach this,” she says. “Lunar dust is one of the most significant problems that we have for going to the moon, especially for long duration stays. So, it’s really exciting to be working on this, and to be doing this as an applied way to look at lunar dust problems.”

Dove has been studying lunar dust physics for many years, and this project extends her existing knowledge and outcomes to how they may directly affect exploration. For this project, she studies how the dust particles interact with the new coatings during the experiments in the vacuum chamber to better inform the prototype coatings Zhai will develop.

“A lot of the work I do is to implement different ways to measure the sticking forces of dust grains and other materials,” Dove says. “So, one way to do that is to put a lot of dust on a surface and then to spin the surface really fast with a centrifuge and see at what speed the grains come off — we use that to measure the force.”

The research team hopes that their new understandings of lunar dust can inform more efficient ways to reduce the dust’s harmful interactions with surfaces by minimizing efforts to physically remove the dust and instead use passive methods such as relying on solar wind or radiation.

“When astronauts are hopping around the surface or rovers are driving around, they’re going to stir up dust, and that dust naturally gets all over the place,” she says. “We think of it like when we get sand on us at the beach, you can mostly just wipe it off. Sometimes you get a little scratched, though. That same thing can happen with lunar dust, but it’s much worse than beach sand – much harder to get clean and its scratchier.”

The researchers are opting to explore passive methods to mitigate the dust to avoid potentially scratching technologies such as sensors or cameras by wiping away dust. Passive dust mitigation may rely on solar wind, radiation or other passive forces distinct from an active approach such as applying an electric field to remove the dust.

“This project is really focusing on passive ways to change the surface so that dust just doesn’t stick as well in the first place,” Dove says. “So, if we do things like shake it off or blow some air on it the dust comes off more easily.”

The idea for the project progressed as the team continually discussed dust and surface interactions over the years.

Laurene Tetard, a professor of physics, specializes in atomic force microscopy. Atomic force microscopes (AFM) are powerful enough to examine challenges at the nanoscale, and they are critical to further understanding the dust experiments in the vacuum chamber and the effectiveness of the surfaces engineered by Zhai.

“We are hoping to develop a new platform that links nanoscience and space research in a new way.” —Laurene Tetard, professor of physics

“We are hoping to develop a new platform that links nanoscience and space research in a new way,” Tetard says. “We will design a platform that can perform these measurements under conditions that mimic space conditions. The information obtained from these measurements will provide important feedback to optimize the engineered surface.”

She says expanding the frontiers of AFM to space research is particularly unique, and that the future opportunities to build on this research are equally gratifying.

“It will be great to train students in this new direction for future applications of interest of NASA and other space-related industries,” Tetard says. “And it’s especially exciting to do that with experts in these fields who know a lot about the complementary aspects of this work.”

Tarek Elgohary, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is collaborating with other team members to create simulations that will help them understand how the particles interact with each other and with different surfaces.

“We’ve got particle-to-particle and particle to surface interactions,” he says. “We want to simulate those on the computers and then match what we know from the experiments, such as the physical properties, with what we get from the simulation. So essentially, we’re trying to close the loop between simulations and experiments to better understand the physical phenomenon.”

Understanding how electrical charges may move amongst dust particles and how the dust maintains charges or discharges through simulated environments is an important aspect of the research component that Elgohary is studying.

“That will essentially help us with the design process of the passive mitigation techniques that Lei, Addie and Laurene are looking into,” he says.

The interdisciplinary nature of the project and the longstanding desire to tackle the elusive challenge of lunar dust are some of what Elgohary says are most rewarding aspects of the research process.

“I started talking to Addie many years ago, and we have had several efforts to try to understand how the dust moves and interacts,” he says. “It’s a fascinating problem, and it requires understanding the physics and connecting that to an engineering application to allow us to have a greater presence on the lunar surface. The fact that there are four of us covering each piece of this problem is one of the of the most exciting things about this project.”

Researchers’ Credentials:

Dove received her doctorate in astrophysical and planetary sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Missouri. She joined UCF’s Department of Physics in 2012. In 2017, Dove was awarded the Susan Niebur Early Career Award by the NASA Solar System Exploration Virtual Research Institute for her contributions to the science and exploration communities. She is the deputy-principal investigator of the Lunar-VISE mission to the moon’s Gruithuisen Domes to examine lunar rocks and regolith, slated to launch in 2027.

Elgohary joined Ů��AV in 2016 as an assistant professor. He manages the Astrodynamics, Space and Robotics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the American University in Cairo and a master’s degree and doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M University. Elgohary’s research interests are developing analytical & computational techniques for multi-body dynamics problems, astrodynamics, space domain awareness and space flight guidance, navigation, and control problems. His research has been funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Space Force.

Tetard received her doctorate in physics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and joined UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center and Department of Physics in 2013. She is a U.S. National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program awardee and Moore Experimental Physics Investigator awardee. Her team’s research focuses on developments of Scanning Probe Microscopy to study complex systems with applications in life sciences, materials, energy, catalysis and more.

Zhai is a Ů��AV professor who received his doctorate in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University. He joined UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center and Department of Chemistry in 2005. Zhai is a Scialog Fellow at Research Corporation for Science Advancement and received an NSF CAREER award in 2008. He was the faculty advisor of a UCF team that won the Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing Idea Challenge in 2021.

The material is based upon work supported by NASA ESI Program Award 80NSSC25K7282. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the principal investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASA.

All five awardees teach and conduct research through UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS), and together their funding totals an estimated $3 million to advance real world technologies and positively impact the world.

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

Since the program launched in FY 1995, nearly 100 UCF faculty have qualified for NSF CAREER grants, generating more than $40 million in research funding. It has supported a pathway to implement their research through UCF’s Office of Technology Transfer, which helps bring discoveries to the marketplace through licensing UCF technologies and providing information about sponsored research opportunities.

UCF Associate Professors Sidong Lei and Truong Nghiem along with Assistant Professors Kevin Moran, Wen Shen and Hao Zheng continue to accelerate research in their respective fields through their NSF CAREER projects.

Studying Specialized Semiconductors

Sidong Lei

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

NanoScience Technology Center (NTSC)

Project Title: Van der Waals Semiconductor Integration via Surface and Interface Tailoring

Award: A total of $516,085 over five years, with $449,136 over three years at UCF

Sidong Lei endeavors to meet the demand for better materials to help make smaller devices run more efficiently.

“We all want our phones, smartwatches and laptops to be lighter, faster and more powerful,” says Lei, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “To make that happen, we need to shrink the size of the electronic circuits so that more components, such as transistors, which are tiny switches for computing, can fit onto a single chip.”

Lei researches new methods of developing innovative microelectronics by studying electronic and optoelectronic properties of emerging materials.

“As we push the limits of traditional silicon technology into the sub-10 nanometer range, it becomes extremely difficulty to make the chips even smaller,” he says. “At the same time, new technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are demanding faster speeds, lower energy use and many more. All these make current microelectronics struggle and urge new materials and device architecture.”

Through the NSF CAREER award he received in 2023 and brought with him to UCF the following year, Lei is exploring how Van der Waals semiconductors may be integrated at the 3D level versus the 2D level. These specialized semiconductors represent a major frontier in materials science, offering a path to ultrathin, flexible and high-performance electronic and photonic devices— pushing beyond the limits of traditional bulk semiconductors such as silicon.

“The question is how can we produce functional devices with these materials?” Lei says. “Other than fundamental investigations, we want to see our explorations and innovations find practical applications in critical fields. My research aims to find pathways towards this purpose.”

His NSF CAREER project, much like the advanced materials he studies, integrates well with his group’s portfolio of research and translates into real-world applications.

“We are developing methods to fabricate very large-scale integration circuit based on 2D materials and looking for strategies to combine them with mature silicon technology to further enhance their functionality,” Lei says. “We are also investigating strategies to fabricate very-large-scale integrated circuits in flexible and stretchable packaging materials. This research will allow us to implement next-generation wearable and implantable electronics devices for health monitoring and disease treatment, for example, on Parkinson’s disease.”

The vast opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration to advance research at UCF were a significant factor in Lei’s decision to expanding his career here.

“UCF offers a comprehensive platform to elevate my research,” he says. “Modern scientific and technological challenges are typically highly complex, requiring the integration of expertise from different fields. The integration is truly happening here. Only a few months after joining, I have already become acquainted with many new colleagues who are experts in their respective fields, continually refreshing my perspective.”

Lei considers his triumph in earning an NSF CAREER award funding a shared effort, and he credits UCF and his colleagues for their unwavering support and guidance.

“The award represents a meaningful confirmation from my peers of my efforts and endeavors,” he says. “However, the most enjoyable and exciting part was the journey itself, which included deciding on research directions, building a research team and then gradually generating results.”

Improving User Interface Experiences

Kevin Moran

Department of Computer Science

Cyber Security and Privacy Cluster

Project Title: Enhanced UI Engineering via Automated Semantic Screen Understanding

Award: $582,308 over five years

Whether it’s a smart phone or a computer, the user interface (UI) is a critical gateway for people interacting with software and technology.

An intuitive UI can make a world of difference to new users and ultimately be the deciding factor for users when it comes to feeling comfortable with technology, says Kevin Moran, assistant professor of computer science.

His research group at UCF aims to make it easier for software engineers to build complex yet user-friendly systems that translate into practical use.

“More aspects of daily life rely on software than at any point in human history,” he says. “From banking to social media, the importance of the quality of the software that we interact with on a daily basis has never been more important. My lab at UCF aims to help provide engineers the tools that they need to wrangle this complexity, using machine learning, program analysis, and careful tool design.”

Through his Software Automation, Generation, and Engineering (SAGE) Lab, Moran and his research group help simplify the difficulties engineers may face in building and troubleshooting such complicated systems. His research tackles two challenges in software engineering: making issue tracking (also known as bug reporting) more robust and improving the UI engineering process.

UI engineering is the practice of developing, testing and managing UI software, which is an emerging topic his group specializes in, and it is the focus of his newly awarded NSF CAREER project.

“My team and I have done quite a bit of work on UI engineering, a research area we pioneered,” Moran says. “Building the user interfaces for software has long been documented to be a particularly challenging task. My team and I were among the first to combine program analysis, computer vision, and machine learning techniques to develop tools to help aid developers in engineering high quality UIs.”

His project focuses on automating tedious tasks for software engineers through artificial intelligence (AI). The proposed AI model will learn from UI interactions, understand UI features, and automatically translate them to code for engineers.

Ultimately, this may save software engineers time and increase their efficiency in developing UIs, Moran says.

“Our aim with this work is to get our developed programming tools to software engineers so that they can improve the quality of the UIs they are building,” he says. “For the general public that uses software, this means UIs that are easier to use and contain fewer bugs.”

The path to earning such a prestigious grant like the NSF CAREER award requires a high level of detail and Moran says receiving one is incredibly gratifying.

“CAREER proposals are rigorously reviewed by other scientists in my area of research, and receiving the grant is tremendous validation for a very ambitious future research agenda related to improving UI engineering,” he says. “This award will fund students who will be working on projects to help make it easier for developers to build high quality user interfaces, so that hopefully in the future, we can reduce the frustrating interactions that users may have when interacting with software.”

Moran says Ů��AV provided a space for professional growth. The university’s vast resources, which include welcoming and collaborative faculty, helped to further hone his skills that ultimately led to receiving his NSF CAREER award.

“Being a part of this academic community lead to the formation of some of the ideas in my proposal and I am excited to be a part of computer science at UCF, particularly as we expand our department and expertise in AI,” Moran says. “CECS has a CAREER mentoring program where I was paired with senior scientists in my area of work who were able to give me early feedback on my proposal. They helped me to refine the plan of work and gave me invaluable suggestions. Ů��AV played a key part in my success for this award”

Machine Learning Guidance to Make Smart Systems Even Smarter

Truong Nghiem

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project Title: Composite Physics-Informed Learning of Dynamics Systems

Award: $477,585 over five years

Associate Professor Truong Nghiem came to ��AV in Fall 2024, bringing expertise in machine learning and autonomous systems.

His research focuses on developing new methods that blend machine learning with physical principles to improve complex systems such as autonomous vehicles, smart buildings and industrial automation systems.

“My work aims to help create the intelligent, autonomous systems of the future—systems that will enhance productivity, improve safety, and make everyday life more convenient and sustainable,” says Nghiem, whose research group is called the intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems (iCPS) Lab. “I specialize in intelligent cyber-physical systems — engineered systems that seamlessly integrate the cyber world, which includes computation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), with the physical world, which includes mechanical and dynamic systems like vehicles, buildings and robots.”

His CAREER project, which he transferred from his previous university, directly supports his ongoing efforts and broadens the scope of his machine learning research.

“This research aims to create a composite physics-informed machine learning (CPIML) framework,” Nghiem says. “Physics-informed machine learning (PIML) embeds the laws of physics into the learning process, leading to models that are more accurate, physically consistent and interpretable compared to traditional machine learning approaches. CPIML takes this a step further by enabling the composition of both physics-based models and PIML components — along with their physical properties — to model more complex, large-scale systems.”

Applications of machine learning that may be integrated into everyday life include improved response times of autonomous vehicles and robots, smarter energy systems that optimize energy use and temperature control, and more reliable industrial robotic systems that require minimal supervision.

Nghiem says he strives for his research to not only provide foundational knowledge but to also have a direct impact on real technologies that people are using right now.

“As our world becomes increasingly automated, ensuring that systems are safe, efficient and trustworthy isn’t just a scientific goal — it’s a societal necessity,” he says. “I have developed efficient models for HVAC systems in buildings that improve energy management, and I’ve also worked on predictive models for autonomous racing cars, pushing the boundaries of what AI can do in dynamic, high-speed environments.”

Like the complex systems Nghiem studies, a university’s network of resources should be robust and reliable. He says he’s fortunate that his research fits perfectly into UCF’s supportive interdisciplinary ecosystem.

“UCF’s commitment is evident through initiatives like the and the ,” Nghiem says. “This work also underscores the importance of combining knowledge from different domains, bringing together AI, engineering and physics to create solutions for real-world problems.”

Elevating Rare Earth Elements to Make Powerful Magnets

Wen Shen

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

NanoScience Technology Center

Project Title: Manufacturing of Rare Earth Permanent Magnets via Three-dimensional Printing and Decomposition of Hydrogels

Award: $697,264 over five years

Rare earth permanent magnets (REPMs) — composed of alloys containing rare-earth elements — are the strongest permanent magnets with numerous applications across aerospace, automotive, electronics, medical devices and renewable energy industries due to their exceptional magnetic properties.

REPMs generate strong magnetic fields through aligned atomic structures, attracting ferromagnetic materials by inducing a magnetic field, enabling them to lift heavy loads, power motors and generate energy in various technologies.

Despite their widespread use, current REPMs manufacturing techniques are energy- intensive, complex and struggle to fabricate magnets with intricate shapes and minimal defects.

That’s where Wen Shen, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCF, comes in. Her NSF CAREER project aims to develop a new hydrogel-based additive manufacturing process that fabricates high-quality REPMs more efficiently.

The new fabrication process, which uses 3D printing and decomposition of hydrogels containing rare-earth elements, has tremendous potential, Shen says.

“This research will enable an energy-efficient and laser-free additive manufacturing process that fabricates REPMs with near-zero defects as well as excellent magnetic and mechanical properties,” she says. “If successful, the outcome of this research will significantly impact the global REPMs market.”

Shen says she’s honored to be an NSF CAREER award recipient and continues to elevate her impactful research.

“The CAREER award allows me to conduct in-depth studies,” she says. “It fits well into my career, allowing me to advance my goals as both a researcher and educator while fostering impactful contributions to academia and industry.”

UCF encourages state-of-the-art research through its resources, educational opportunities and collaborative environment. Shen says that she and her colleagues are grateful for the vast availability of university-wide support that helps advance their research and allows faculty to thrive.

“The fellowships as well as the research facilities and infrastructure provided by the MAE department, CECS [the College of Engineering and Computer Science] and NSTC [NanoScience Technology Center] to my group allowed me to conduct unique and transformative research that can make potential societal impacts,” Shen says. “I would like to acknowledge my department chair, the CECS dean, [and] the NSTC director, who have been very supportive of my research since I joined UCF.”

New Chips to Keep Pace with Modern Processing Demands

Hao Zheng

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project Title: A Scalable, Polymorphic, and Efficient Architecture for Irregular and Sparse Computations (APEX)

Award: $550,000 over five years

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, while transformative, has created new challenges for today’s computing hardware.

Hao Zheng, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, says he’s determined to navigate these challenges and arrive at solutions. His NSF CAREER project, much like his research, focuses on how to enhance the performance, energy efficiency and utility of chip processors to support the evolving landscape of AI workloads.

“My research lies in the area of computer architecture and machine learning,” Zheng says. “I aim to design versatile chip processors that can greatly speed up machine learning applications with significantly reduced power consumption.”

Creating general-purpose or fully customized chips have been the most common methods of addressing emerging challenges in computational tasks, but both approaches have drawbacks.

Zheng’s bold solution is to design a chip that can adapt to any applications with various computing tasks. His research group, the Intelligent Computer Architecture and Technology (iCAT) Laboratory, is working to revolutionize current chip architectures, such as graphics processing units (GPUs), to handle the rising complexity of modern AI workloads. These include not just large models but multimodal systems, robotics, simulations and real-time decision-making.

“Specializing the underlying hardware architecture has become a trending solution to meet the computational demands of modern applications,” Zheng says. “However, current specialized hardware, in the form of accelerators, is either fully customized for regular applications or lacks the generality to support a wide range of applications. However, today’s applications are evolving rapidly with increasingly complex workloads such as large language models, multi-modal models, embodied AI, among others.”

Some real-world applications of his research can directly affect how robotics, augmented and virtual reality, autonomous driving, simulations and biological discoveries operate.

“This award will introduce a transformative concept — the polymorphic chip processor — to support ubiquitous irregular and complex applications with intensive data,” Zheng says. “The research will invent a new class of chip processors, grounded in graph theory, that can dynamically adapt to irregular and complex workloads at runtime. We believe this can have a transformative impact on computer architecture, compilers, scheduling and many other key areas in computing.”

Zheng says his NSF CAREER award is just the beginning of what he can achieve here at UCF.

“This honor is a testament to the collective efforts of my entire research team,” he says. “I truly appreciate the collaborative research culture here at UCF. I’ve also benefited greatly from the guidance and encouragement of my colleagues, and I would like to thank our department chair, Dr. Reza Abdolvand, for his support over the past several years. Most importantly, I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked with four exceptional Ph.D. students who have grown alongside me throughout this journey.”

Opportunities for growth and enrichment at UCF are plenty, Zheng says. Exploring emerging unconventional applications for chips, strengthening educational development and collaborating with industry are three pillars he aspires to focus on and expand as he continues his research.

“First, I plan to establish a solid theoretical foundation for irregular application acceleration,” Zheng says. “Second, I intend to collaborate with industry to prototype the concept. By the end of the award period, we aim to have a functional chip processor running in the lab, demonstrating the practicality of our idea.”

One of the most important and personal components of his future efforts is his emphasis on education.

“This is the core mission of both our university and the academic community,” Zheng says. “As a first-generation college student, I am aware that a significant number of UCF students come from similar backgrounds. I will provide mentorship to both undergraduate and graduate students interested in the chip industry.”

UCF ranks No. 51 overall in the world and No. 20 among U.S. public universities in a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) list announced today.

Patents play a crucial role in facilitating innovation and protecting intellectual property, enabling universities like UCF to transform groundbreaking research into real-world applications. UCF’s high ranking by the NAI highlights its significant contributions to global technological advancements and its commitment to driving positive change worldwide. Developing patents also underscores UCF’s reputation for innovation. UCF has ranked as the most innovative university in Florida for seven consecutive years, according to U.S. News & World Report.

“UCF’s high ranking amongst top patent producing public universities in the U.S. and worldwide underscores our exceptionally talented and innovative researchers,” says Winston V. Schoenfeld, UCF’s vice president for research and innovation. “Each year, we continue to rise through the rankings, demonstrating the continued growth of our research enterprise and commitment to developing technologies that have global value. It’s been incredibly gratifying to see our researchers’ hard work culminate into patents that propel science and ultimately change the world.”

The rankings are based on . The rankings use calendar year data provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and aim to provide a comprehensive view of intellectual property protection in the innovation ecosystem.

“Patents are vital for universities because they stimulate innovation, foster economic growth, and positively impact quality of life,” says Svetlana Shtrom��’08MBA, director of UCF’s Office of Technology Transfer.

For the 2024 ranking, UCF secures its placement with 68 patents on the NAI worldwide list for the 12^th consecutive year.

This also is the eighth consecutive year that five State University System institutions ranked among the top 100 in the world.

“This achievement recognizes the real-world impact of administrators, faculty, and students who are focused on innovation and not indoctrination. Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have recently invested more than $200M to recruit and retain top-tier faculty; this is just another example of how Florida’s efforts are paying off,” said Chancellor Ray Rodrigues of the State University System. “These rankings show our System’s commitment to invention, research, and innovation, which leads to increased commercialization for our local communities, our state, and the nation.”

The patent process is undertaken by the UCF Office of Technology Transfer team of professionals who have a combined expertise in science, business and law. Their team helps bring promising research discoveries to the marketplace through customized intellectual property protections, market research and licensing.

“Patents are vital for universities because they stimulate innovation, foster economic growth, and positively impact quality of life,” says Svetlana Shtrom��’08MBA, director of UCF’s Office of Technology Transfer. “Our office works as the bridge between industry partners and our world-class researchers by promoting commercialization of novel inventions into products that deliver a range of economic, health and other global benefits.”

The NAI is a member organization comprised of U.S. and international universities, and governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with over 4,600 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 260 institutions.

Patents That Impact the World

UCF researchers are contributing to developments from immune cell modifications to better fight disease to free-space optical communication systems to enhance wireless technology.�� Here is a collection of ��AV inventions that led to patents in 2024:

Immune Cell Modifications to Better Fight Disease

Lead researcher:��Associate Professor Alicja Copik
Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences

This invention relates to methods and compositions for modulating the activity of natural killer (NK) cells. NK cells are a type of immune cell that plays a critical role in eliminating infected or cancerous cells. The disclosed methods and compositions can enhance NK cell activity, thereby improving the immune system’s ability to fight disease. These methods may offer advantages over previous approaches to stimulating NK cells, such as improved specificity, reduced toxicity, or enhanced effectiveness against certain types of cancer or infection. This technology was licensed to a UCF startup company which was later acquired.

Color-changing Fabric for Use in Advertising, Fashion or Camouflage

Lead researcher: UCF Trustee Chair and Professor Ayman Abouraddy

The invention discloses . The fabric incorporates materials or technologies that allow it to change color in response to external stimuli, such as temperature, light, or electrical signals. This offers advancements over traditional fabrics with fixed colors, enabling dynamic and interactive applications in fashion, advertising, and camouflage. Compared to prior attempts to create color-changing fabrics, this invention outlines materials or techniques that achieve a wider color range, improved durability, faster response times or greater control over the color change process.

Low-cost, Low-power, Free-space Optical Communications System

Lead researcher: Associate Research Professor Kyle Renshaw

The invention details an . Free-space optical communication uses light to transmit data through the air, as opposed to using wires or optical fibers. The system utilizes optical imaging techniques to precisely align and transmit data-encoded light beams through the atmosphere or space, enabling high-bandwidth wireless communication. This approach may offer advantages over traditional radio frequency communications or non-imaging optical systems in terms of data capacity, security or resistance to interference.

AI and Mixed Reality Framework to Analyze Civil Infrastructure and More

Lead researcher: Postdoctoral Scholar Enes Karaaslan ’19PhD
Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering

This invention discloses methods for artificial intelligence assisted . Mixed reality combines elements of both physical and virtual environments, allowing users to interact with both simultaneously. The mixed reality system overlays digital information onto the real world, enabling inspectors to visualize and assess infrastructure conditions with the aid of AI-powered analysis. Unlike traditional infrastructure assessment methods that rely on manual inspection and limited data, this AI-assisted approach can automatically identify potential problems, analyze large datasets, and provide more comprehensive and objective assessments. This leads to more efficient, accurate and safer infrastructure management.

Efficient Moon Water Extraction System to Sustain Lunar Missions

Lead researcher: Planetary Scientist Phil Metzger ’00MS ’05PhD

The invention describes and the associated method. Lunar regolith is the loose soil and rock material on the surface of the moon. The system employs techniques to heat and process lunar soil to liberate water, which is then collected and purified. This technology is crucial for enabling long-term lunar missions and establishing sustainable lunar bases. Compared to transporting water from Earth, extracting water from lunar resources would significantly reduce the cost and complexity of lunar exploration. This system may offer improved efficiency, scalability, or resource utilization compared to previous lunar water extraction concepts.

Lung Cancer Killing Proteins

Lead researcher: Professor Annette Khaled
Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences

Genes provide instructions for making proteins, but these proteins must be folded into functional three-dimensional shapes by helper proteins called chaperones. Cancer cells depend heavily on chaperones due to their unstable genes that produce many damaging misfolded proteins. While initially found to be safe, available drugs that inhibit protein-folding chaperones in cancer cells did not stop cancer growth since chaperones are abundant and hard to inhibit without toxicity.

Researchers identified a chaperonin called CCT, highly expressed in cancer cells but not in healthy cells. Unlike other chaperones, CCT folds proteins essential for cancer growth and spread. The invention is a small peptide designed to target and bind the subunits that form the CCT machine, inhibiting its ability to fold proteins. This peptide can be delivered to solid tumors like breast or prostate cancer using nanoparticles. Cancer cells take up the peptide and, within hours, lose the ability to form essential proteins needed for their survival and die. In contrast, healthy cells that take the peptide are minimally affected. The CCT inhibitory peptide is a first-in-kind drug that is a substrate-independent of the chaperonin and has broad application.

This technology is being licensed to a startup company.

Energy-storing Fibers for Use in Electric Vehicles

Lead researcher: Professor Jayan Thomas

This patent details a . Carbon fiber is a strong and lightweight material used in vehicle construction. The carbon fiber panels are designed to function as structural components as well as energy storage devices, increasing the energy density and efficiency of electric vehicles. Compared to traditional batteries, this approach integrates energy storage directly into the vehicle structure, potentially reducing weight and improving space utilization.

Advanced PFAS Water Filtration System

Lead researcher: Professor Ni-bin Chang
Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering

This patented water treatment system uses a filtration media mix of recyclable materials to promote removal of contaminants, including perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) from water sources, which are part of the PFAS chemicals linked to cancer and other health risks.�� ��AV is seeking commercial partners to license this technology, for more information please contact Andrea.White@ucf.edu.

Quantum Cascade Laser to Convert Electrical Energy into Infrared Light

Lead researcher:��Associate Professor Arkadiy Lyakh

This patent introduces a Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) designed for high efficiency. A QCL is a type of laser that emits infrared light. The new QCL structure maximizes the conversion of electrical energy into infrared light. Compared to previous QCL designs, this new structure is optimized to minimize energy loss during the conversion process, leading to improved efficiency. The improved efficiency reduces power consumption and improves thermal management. This efficient QCL can be used in spectroscopy (analyzing light spectra), gas sensing and free-space communications, making it useful in various scientific and industrial fields where power consumption is a key consideration. This technology is licensed to a UCF startup company.

Machine Learning System to Analyze Actions via Computer Vision

Lead researcher:��Graduate Research Assistant Ishan Rajendrakumar Dave ’24PhD
Department of Computer Science

This uses machine learning techniques to recognize actions from video data without requiring explicit labels, thus reducing the need and expense for human annotation while mitigating privacy concerns by removing associated sensitive data within a scene. This system is particularly relevant in applications such as surveillance video, healthcare and human-computer interactions.

As a UCF Pegasus Professor and chair of materials science and engineering department, Seal takes his research down to the nanoscale.

He focuses on cerium oxide nanoparticles known as nanoceria. These specialized nanoparticles are versatile and can be tailored for a variety of medical applications.

Since arriving at ��AV in 1997, Seal has 92 ��AV patents to his credit, with more than 450 journal papers. A pioneer in nanoceria research for the biomedical sector, his work focuses on the nanoscience of advanced materials processing and materials science and engineering.

Nanoceria and Biomedical Applications

As Seal continued his research, he realized nanoceria was being used for microelectronic processing, but not yet in the biomedical sector. “We at UCF are the first ones to show that this has wonderful properties,” Seal says. “We filed a patent and were the very first to show nano cerium cell survivability,” he says “Then of course, after that, the field has really blossomed. There is a wide range of applications in biomedical sciences — from cancer research to bone regeneration, tissue regeneration and radiation protection. All from this almost accidental discovery made at UCF.”

Since then, Seal and his research team have found that nanoceria are non-toxic and great carriers for delivering therapeutic agents and have regenerative oxidative properties.

Seal says that the nanoceria structure can be tweaked depending on the application.

“In layman’s terms, I would say I create openings in that crystal structure that I can tinker with,” he says. “This is where the functional materials come in. I can take one opening and use it to send something, maybe I can load a drug on it. I can take another opening and keep it open to destroy nasty radicals produced by cells that are not needed.”

Seal says that nanoceria’s versatility enables companies to put them in pills or injectables. “The sky’s the limit,” he says. “There’s also recent data that when combined with drugs, the nanoceria material actually protects the good cells, while the drug kills cancer cells even more potently.”

Seal’s cerium oxide research has led to four technologies that he co-developed with Kenneth Liechty, division chief of pediatric surgery and vice chair of surgery research at the University of Arizona. Liechty was previously at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, which is where he and Seal had collaborated.

Seal and Liechty combined UCF’s nanoceria platform with the University of Colorado’s experience in microRNA (miRNA) to engineer a specialized miRNA that can assist with diabetic wound healing. Found in all human cells, miRNA plays important roles in many biological processes such as cell proliferation or development of specific cell functions and characteristics.

Wound Healing for Diabetic Patients

Seal and collaborators leveraged the cerium oxide molecules to deliver specialized miRNA to an enflamed wound site in patients with diabetes to correct the inflammatory response at the molecular level. Once there, the molecules shorten the time of diabetic wound closure and help avoid the complications associated with impaired diabetic wound healing as those with diabetes often experience slower wound healing.

The molecules specifically combat excess reactive oxygen species molecules, which may build up as a result of prolonged inflammation and ultimately delay proper wound closure and healing. With that kind of inflammatory response, the body can produce a build-up of excess reactive oxygen species molecules, which then leads to increased oxidative stress inside cells.

Nanosilk Fibers to Protect Skin and Treat Injuries

Nanosilk fibers created from silkworms or spiders is another unique healing invention developed by UCF and the University of Colorado.

The patented invention includes biocompatible and hypoallergenic compositions to heal, protect and strengthen skin. It also employs a combined nanoceria-miRNA specialized composition.

Silk comprises two proteins: fibroin and sericin. The silk core is fibroin, often used to make surgical sutures because it is non-toxic and biocompatible with human tissues. Fibroin solution converts to many forms, including films, sponges, gels and powders.

During their research, the inventors found that applying a layered system of silk fibroin fibers in solution and spun mat formats can effectively protect and strengthen skin, especially in weak areas that are injury-prone or stressed repetitively.

Also, they found that when integrated with cerium oxide molecules conjugated with the miRNA, the silk fibroin fiber solution and mat enhanced wound healing.

“We are now using biodegradable material to deliver therapeutics in disease sites,” Seal says. “Silk ceria composite is one of them — it’s green and sustainable technology.”

The solution of silk fibroin fibers may be applied as a spray, liquid, form or gel, and the fibroin mat can be applied as a mat, sheet, gel or fiber.

The invention can be used as a protective layer to improve the skin’s elasticity, thus preventing or reducing injury, even minor blisters and skin ulcers. It can also treat a variety of wounds, and it can be used to treat injuries to subcutaneous tissue.

Nanoceria and miRNA for Tissue Regeneration

UCF and the University of Colorado collaborated with the University of Pennsylvania to develop a nanoceria-miRNA conjugate that not only assists with wound healing, but with tissue regeneration and angiogenesis (the growth of new blood vessels).

“You need angiogenesis, and you need blood vessels to grow,” Seal says.

For instance, after a heart attack, the invention aids recovery by reducing the body’s inflammatory response and helping it to generate new tissue for blood vessels.

As with diabetic wounds, heart attacks can cause the body to produce excess reactive oxygen species, increase oxidative stress and inflammation.

Offering both treatment and prevention, the patented invention can significantly mitigate heart damage and prevent adverse ventricular remodeling during recovery.

Treating and Preventing Lung Injury

Seal says that his earlier work 10-15 years ago on lung injury and cancer therapy radiation helped to develop new technology with the University of Colorado to promote lung repair, reduce lung inflammation and help treat or prevent pulmonary diseases or conditions.

“When you treat the lungs with nanoceria, the good cells around the lungs are protected from the radiotherapy while the radiotherapy is killing the cancer cells,” Seal says. “The cerium oxide has this bifunctionality to protect the good cells from the radiation.”

He explained that the nanocerium oxide has multivalent states, meaning the invention’s nanoparticles can stay silent when they want to and stay active when needed.

“What we have seen in nanoscale depends on the microenvironment in the cell,” he says. “It can switch back and forth.”

The cerium oxide and miRNA compositions of the invention can be administered in different forms as a spray or a pump.

Seal says he plans to continue promoting the commercialization aspect of technology developed within his department.

“I’m really a proponent of people creating new IPs and taking them to the next level,” he says. “The world of nanomaterials is quite intriguing and the potential benefit of the nanomaterials, nanotechnology is immense.”

Researcher’s Credentials
Seal is a UCF Pegasus Professor, UCF trustee chair, and chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Seal joined the department and the Advanced Materials Processing Analysis Center, which is part of, in 1997. He has an appointment at and is a member of UCF’s prosthetics Biionix faculty cluster initiative. He is a past director of UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center and Advanced Materials Processing Analysis Center. Seal received his doctorate in materials engineering with a minor in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley.

Technology Available for License
To learn more about Seal’s work and potential licensing of these UCF technologies or for more information about sponsored research opportunities, contact Andrea White (andrea.white@ucf.edu) at (407) 823-0138.

The research was recently published in Nano Letters, an esteemed scholarly journal published by the American Chemical Society.

The findings are the result of a $1.5 million project funded through the Extreme Photon Imaging Capabilities program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that was awarded nearly two years ago.

The new detection and imaging technique will have applications in analyzing materials by their spectral properties, or spectroscopic imaging, as well as thermal imaging applications.

Humans perceive primary and secondary colors but not infrared light. Scientists hypothesize that animals like snakes or nocturnal species can detect various wavelengths in the infrared almost like how humans perceive colors.

Infrared, specifically LWIR, detection at room temperature has been a long-standing challenge due to the weak photon energy, Chanda says.

LWIR detectors can be broadly classified into either cooled or uncooled detectors, the researcher says.

Cooled detectors excel in high detectivity and fast response times but their reliance on cryogenic cooling significantly escalates their cost and restricts their practical applications.

In contrast, uncooled detectors, like microbolometers, can function at room temperature and come at a relatively lower cost but exhibit lower sensitivity and slower response times, Chanda says.

Both kinds of LWIR detectors lack the dynamic spectral tunability, and so they can’t distinguish photon wavelengths of different “colors.”

Chanda and his team of postdoctoral scholars sought to expand beyond the limitations of existing LWIR detectors, so they worked to demonstrate a highly sensitive, efficient and dynamically tunable method based on a nanopatterned graphene.

Tianyi Guo��’23�ʳ�� is the lead author of the research. Guo completed his doctoral degree at Ů��AV in 2023 under Chanda’s mentorship. He is the recipient of an international thesis award from Springer Nature and his thesis exploring potential LWIR detection methods was published in the high-impact��Springer Theses��book series.

This newly discovered method is the culmination of the research that Guo, Chanda and others in Chanda’s lab have performed, Chanda says.

“No present cooled or uncooled detectors offer such dynamic spectral tunability and ultrafast response,” Chanda says. “This demonstration underscores the potential of engineered monolayer graphene LWIR detectors operating at room temperature, offering high sensitivity as well as dynamic spectral tunability for spectroscopic imaging.”

The detector relies on a temperature difference in materials (known as the Seebeck effect) within an asymmetrically patterned graphene film. Upon light illumination and interaction, the patterned half generates hot carriers with greatly enhanced absorption while the unpatterned half remains cool. The diffusion of the hot carriers creates a photo-thermoelectric voltage and is measured between the source and drain electrodes.

By patterning the graphene into a specialized array, the researchers achieved an enhanced absorption and can further electrostatically tune within the LWIR spectra range and provide better infrared detection. The detector significantly surpasses the capabilities of the conventional uncooled infrared detectors — also known as microbolometers.

“The proposed detection platform paves the path for a new generation of uncooled graphene-based LWIR photodetectors for wide ranging applications such as consumer electronics, molecular sensing and space to name a few,” Chanda says.

Researchers from Chanda’s group include postdoctoral scholars Aritra Biswas ’21MS ’24PhD, Sayan Chandra, Arindam Dasgupta, and Muhammad Waqas��Shabbir ’16MS ’21PhD.

Licensing Opportunity

The technology is patented. For more information about licensing this technology, please visit the .

Researchers’ Credentials:

Chanda has joint appointments in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, Department of Physics and CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics. He received his doctorate in photonics from the University of Toronto and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined Ů��AV in Fall 2012.

Guo joined UCF’s physics doctoral program in the fall of 2017 and graduated in fall 2023. He received his bachelor’s of science in 2015 from the University of Science and Technology of China. Guo currently is a postdoctoral researcher in Chanda’s group at UCF.

UCF researchers, led by UCF����Professor Debashis Chanda, developed a “barcoding” technique to quickly identify chiral molecules based on their unique infrared fingerprints, potentially speeding up pharmaceutical and medical advancements.

The molecules can be identified using a special pixelated 2D sensor array that interacts with precise light with the specific properties of the molecules to capture their unique vibrational absorptions, which are then mapped as a barcode.

The study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and was recently published in Advanced Materials.

Chiral molecules are pairs that are similar in structure but are twisted differently (left or right), like how a person’s left and right hands are mirror images of each other. Understanding the nature of chiral molecules is crucial to biological and pharmaceutical research because the mirror image pairs��—��known as enantiomers��—��can each have different effects in the body or in chemical reactions.

Nearly 56% of all modern drugs and medicine are chiral in nature, and about 90% of those are a mixture containing equal amounts of two enantiomers of a chiral compound. Researchers often face the challenge of separating enantiomers or synthesizing only the desired enantiomer to ensure optimal therapeutic outcomes and minimize adverse effects.

Most modern medicines and drugs are chiral and are marketed as racemates (equal mixtures of enantiomers), which in some cases can have unwanted consequences, Chanda says. This highlights the need for techniques that can identify such molecules reliably and accurately.

“On molecular adsorption, the combined system’s response depends on the degree and positional overlap of the molecule’s absorbance and sensor resonance,” Chanda says. “The measured signal is analyzed and encoded to generate a ‘chiral barcode’ for uniquely identifying the adsorbed chiral molecule. We show applicability of the platform by analyzing and generating unique chirality-based barcodes for an enantiomeric pair of small molecules, as well as a pair of spectrally similar larger chiral biomolecules based on very low volumes of analytes at ultra-low concentrations.”

The sensing platform is made of specially engineered nanopatterned gold where the interactions between the plasmonic and photonic cavity modes produce strong chiral “superchiral” light, he says.

By changing the geometrical parameters, 25 of such spectrally de-tuned sensors in 5×5 array was produced. When a molecule is added to this array, each sensing element produces slightly different chiral response, resulting in a unique barcode.

“Unlike other existing platforms that require chiral nanostructures of varying asymmetries that can be difficult to replicate, our proposed system’s inherent achirality overcomes this problem, greatly simplifying the fabrication process,” says Aritra Biswas ’12MS ’24PhD, postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the paper. “Additionally, the sensors are fabricated by simple nanoimprint lithography and two deposition steps, therefore making them very robust. We envision that such a versatile, low footprint, mass manufacturable platform would be a crucial tool for drug and biomolecular identification with applications in medical research and pharmaceutical industries.”

“We aim to contribute towards the development of inexpensive and sensitive chiral drug identification methods for chemical, biological and medical research, the fabrication of novel devices exhibiting superior light-matter interaction and the demonstration of a real product with commercial viability,” Chanda says.

Postdoctoral fellow Pablo Cencillo-Abad also contributed to the research and is listed as a study co-author.

Those interested in licensing this technology may .

Researcher’s Credentials:

Chanda has joint appointments in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, Department of Physics and . He received his doctoral degree in photonics from the University of Toronto and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined Ů��AV in Fall 2012.