The goal of GEMiNi is to create impactful mentorships that support the personal, professional and academic growth of students in master’s or doctoral programs. The initiative was created by Nazanin Rahnavard, a professor of electrical engineering, and developed by the College of Graduate Studies.

The idea was born from Rahnavard’s passion for mentoring the next generation of engineers, for which she’s received two prestigious university awards. Over the years, students have come to her for guidance related to academic struggles and their personal challenges, as well. She says it’s important for faculty to know how to handle these situations and to be sensitive to the difficulties graduate students may face.

“Mental health is a big component, and oftentimes graduate students can suffer from depression or anxiety, and it’s important for faculty to see the signs,” Rahnavard, a Graduate Studies faculty fellow, says. “It especially affects international students because they’re away from their families and cultures. We need to be there for them as human beings, to help them navigate this challenging time in their lives.”

Connecting Mentors to Mentees

The key component of the GEMiNi program is mentorship. Students who are seeking a mentor fill out a with information about the type of guidance and support they seek. Graduate students, postdoctoral scholars or faculty who wish to serve as mentors can fill out a with mentoring topics they wish to discuss and their contact information. The GEMiNi director will then match mentors and mentees based on student needs and mentor expertise.

There are three different levels to the mentorship model: Constellation, where senior-level graduate students can mentor incoming graduate students; Supernova, where postdocs can mentor graduate students; or Starlight, where faculty can mentor grad students. Rahnavard sees GEMiNi as not just a professional development tool, but an investment in people.

“Strong mentorship leads to stronger students, stronger faculty and a healthier graduate community.” —  Nazanin Rahnavard, Ů��AV professor

“Strong mentorship leads to stronger students, stronger faculty and a healthier graduate community,” she says. “When we support our students as whole individuals, everyone benefits.”

The College of Graduate Studies continues to expand its leadership in mentoring initiatives across the university, including GEMiNI and the .

Interim Dean John Weishampel emphasizes that mentorship is among the most powerful drivers of student success.

“In addition to academic guidance, it provides professional insight, encouragement, and a sense of belonging that helps students navigate challenges and thrive as scholars and leaders,” Weishampel says. “These initiatives reflect our commitment to building a graduate community where mentorship is intentional and impactful and where students feel supported.”

GEMiNi’s Resource Offerings

The GEMiNi mentorship portal is now open on  the . GEMiNi also offers resources for both faculty and graduate students, including mental health and wellness guides, mentoring guides, and recommended readings on supervision and mentorship in higher education.

The site also includes a template for a mentorship plan that faculty can customize and use for grant proposals.

In the future, additional resources such as workshops, panel discussions and guest speakers will be offered through the GEMiNi program. However, the program requires sponsorships to fund future events and activities.

“Investing in this mentoring program aligns with UCF’s strategic priorities for graduate student success, retention and timely degree completion, offering measurable returns for students and the university,” Rahnavard says. “I look forward to working with university leaders who share a commitment to supporting GEMiNi as a high-impact investment in graduate education.”

Interested department or college administrators can reach out to her at Gradmentoring@ucf.edu for more information.

Editing videos with those same AI commands isn’t quite as simple, however, UCF researchers in the College of Engineering and Computer Science aim to change that.

Professor Nazanin Rahnavard, Associate Professor Chen Chen, and UCF alumni Nazmul Karim ’20MS ’23PhD and Umar Khalid ’20MS ’23PhD have developed novel text-to-video AI technology that can dramatically change videos in minutes.

“Our system takes the ‘brain’ of an AI that’s already skilled at generating images from text and adapts it for video, without losing the creative power that makes it effective in the first place,” Rahnavard says. “Our breakthrough came from recognizing a fundamental inefficiency in existing text-to-video editing approaches. Current systems either require massive text-to-video datasets for training or rely on computationally expensive, per-video adaptations of text-to-image models. We believed there had to be a more efficient and elegant solution.”

With Rahnavard’s background in electrical engineering and Chen’s background in computer science, the team used linear algebra techniques to examine the numerical parameters of an AI model that are optimized and adjusted while learning a new task. They realized that instead of fine-tuning the entire parameter set, they could update only the singular values, preserving the AI model’s ability to generalize while speeding up its adaptation time.

“The key was learning which parts of the AI’s ‘memory’ to adjust, and which to preserve,” Rahnavard says. “By focusing only on the most essential elements and leaving the rest untouched, we created a method that adapts much faster and more efficiently while still producing high-quality, expressive results.”

The AI model works best on existing video clips and can edit them in minutes. It can change the colors of clothing, swap a cat for a dog or transform the clip into a cartoon. The more complex the commands, the longer the editing time. But Rahnavard says the process can still be completed in minutes, not hours.

The university was recently awarded a patent for the technology, which movie studios and social media companies could use.

“This technology has the potential to revolutionize video editing across a wide range of industries,” Rahnavard says. “Movie studios could use it for rapid scene modifications without the need for costly reshoots, while social media platforms could offer their users instant, highly sophisticated video filters far beyond what’s available today.”