Leah Sudhir

NSM.today • 5th December 2023

Basketball taught IEEE president how to lead massive club

When Aden McKinney, junior computer engineering major, was told that his club of over 200 members could not directly collect membership dues, his love for basketball taught him how to persevere and have trust in himself.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is the world’s largest technical professional organization, and McKinney leads the UCF student chapter with about 225 members. He joined the club within his first few weeks at UCF and progressed through the club as a worksho

NSM.today • 5th December 2023

The Inner Workings of Cybersecurity Success: two students compete in national cyber team

After a track record of almost 80 first-place wins, two UCF students will compete internationally as part of the US Cyber Team — the olympics of cybersecurity competitions.

Matthew McKeever, senior computer science major, and Jeffrey DiVincent, a cybersecurity and privacy graduate student are members of Hack@UCF and UCF’s Collegiate Cybersecurity Competition Team. The College of Engineering and Computer Science students will join the US Cyber Team in its third year of operation, with it being D

NSM.today • 21st November 2023

New robotics master’s program approved at BOT meeting

A new M.S. in Robotics and Autonomous Systems was approved, thanks to student demand at a Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday.

"Faculty noticed internal student demand first, back in spring 2022, based on elective course selections and strong participation levels in the student Robotics Club," said Timothy Letzring, vice provost for Academic Affairs.

Dwight Howard II, president of the Robotics Club of Central Florida and junior mechanical major, has been debating whether he should pursue a m

NSM.today • 31st October 2023

New robotic dog paves way for faculty research

A new dog is in town, and it can do more than walk, roll over or climb.

Known as TapeMeasure, the robotic dog can scan areas, conduct research and automate processes, said Dwight Howard II, TapeMeasure lead and vice president of the Robotics Club of Central Florida.

"The reason for a dog or the reason for anything with legs in general is an increase in mobility and the ability to traverse different terrain," Howard said. "A real dog can run over the rubble, jump around, everything like that. I

NSM.today • 25th October 2023

Knights Racing showcases race car at STEM Day

As powertrain lead and mechanical engineering sophomore Nicholas Meade revved the engine to the KR23 race car, students standing outside the Engineering II building plugged their ears and braced themselves for the loud noise.

The Knights Racing’s Formula club showcased their 2023 model race car at STEM Day on Friday, a campus-wide event hosted by the Center of Initiatives for STEM. STEM Day features clubs from the College of Engineering and Computer Sciences, the College of Sciences, faculty de

NSM.today • 19th October 2023

K-pop fans dance the night away for Halloween

Vampires and K-pop idol look-alikes twirled, jumped, and stomped in unison as they danced to Halloween-themed songs.

Shining Knights held a Halloween-themed random play dance outside the Addition Financial Arena on Friday night.

A random play dance is an event for K-pop fans to gather and dance to choreographies they know or cheer on individual dancers, blurring the lines between audiences and performers, according to post45.org.

Sarah Kirk, freshman accounting major, said she liked the addit

NSM.today • 10th October 2023

ECE department grows faculty in diversity and vision

UCF's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department recently hired 12 new faculty for the school year, including three women, which doubled the number of women in their faculty.

The wave of hires has been the highest number of faculty hired in the past several years, according to an ECE article. Reza Abdolvand, ECE’s department chair, said that this growth was needed, with the current number of faculty at 42.

“The growth in resources has not kept up with the growth in population of students,”

NSM.today • 3rd September 2023

IEEE Club plays music with self-built speakers at football tailgate

Amidst the sounds of soldering tools and whirring machines in the Engineering II building’s TI Innovation Lab was the quiet, slow thump and bass of electronic music as electrical engineering junior Tobiah Bower tested out music speakers that he and a team of 15 students built within the lab.

They debuted their latest creation, a subwoofer speaker nicknamed Mark 3, at the first tailgate of the school year on Thursday among other engineering clubs tailgating together.

Bower and his team, part of

NSM.today • 30th April 2023

UCF allocated thousands to improve academic advising: Here’s the update

The Engineering I building halls typically may be deserted on Tuesday mornings with few students studying.

But by 9 a.m. on March 28, a line trailed out of Room 107, the academic advising office, as students stood, squatted or sat on the floor waiting for a walk-in advising appointment.

Although the College of Engineering and Computer Science offers walk-in academic advising every Tuesday, the office closed walk-ins only a few hours in to accommodate the large volume of students seeking advisi

NSM.today • 29th January 2023

UCF STEP Club receives surge in future service puppies to train

Blizzards may be a rare occurrence at UCF, but for the Service-Dog Training and Education Program, the club experienced a different type of blizzard: a puppy blizzard.

The term "puppy blizzard" refers to when the club receives a surge of puppies. These blizzards occur around once a year, according to STEP President Chloe Werner. The club's number of dogs quadrupled to 22, making it the highest number of puppies STEP has seen since its founding.

“We’ve had the most that we’ve ever had, and that