UCF will present its annual Luminary Awards on Oct. 20, recognizing eight faculty members for research that has national and international impact. The awards, now in their 10th year, are selected from nominations by deans, directors and department chairs. The ceremony will be attended by President Cartwright, Provost John Buckwalter, Vice President for Research Winston Schoenfeld and Vice Provost Kelly Ferris Lester.
Among the honorees is Haitham Al‑Deek, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, whose work with the Central Florida Expressway Authority led to the first highly accurate wrong‑way driving detection system in North America, deployed since 2015 and adopted in Florida and Idaho. Andrea Blanco‑Redondo, an endowed professor in the College of Optics and Photonics, is recognized for developing scalable methods to generate and control quantum states of light, including the discovery of a new class of optical pulses, and for publishing in journals such as Science and Nature Photonics. William Crampton, a professor in the Department of Biology, has documented an 860‑volt electric eel in the Amazon Basin, a record noted by Guinness World Records.
Press release issued by UCF Today:
https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucf-honors-8-trailblazing-faculty-with-2026-luminary-awards/
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