Questions asked at UCF rarely stay put.

The answers travel — making highways safer, informing disaster planning, shaping conversations about life-changing technologies and more. Behind that reach are brilliant minds, including eight faculty members whose research and scholarship are being celebrated at the 2026 Luminary Awards. Their achievements demonstrate how UCF expertise reaches beyond campus to address challenges facing Florida and the world.

Now in its 10th year, the annual awards honor faculty whose work brings UCF national and international recognition while elevating the university’s influence across disciplines and communities.

Selected from nominations submitted by deans, directors and department chairs across UCF, the 2026 awardees will be celebrated Oct. 20. Joining the ceremony will be President Cartwright; John Buckwalter, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs; Winston Schoenfeld, vice president for research and innovation; and Kelly Ferris Lester, vice provost for faculty excellence.

Meet this year’s luminaries.

Haitham Al-Deek

Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Haitham Al-Deek is helping stop wrong-way drivers before a dangerous turn becomes a devastating crash.

Working with the Central Florida Expressway Authority, he helped create and implement North America’s first highly accurate wrong-way driving detection and deterrence system. Since its introduction in 2015, thousands of drivers have corrected course before heading in the wrong direction, helping prevent potentially fatal or debilitating crashes.

His algorithm for cost-effectively addressing the highway exits most at risk for wrong-way driving has been widely adopted in Florida and Idaho. Al-Deek’s broader expertise includes freeway operations, intelligent transportation systems and traffic safety. His work has influenced public policy and advanced transportation planning, freight transportation, and the deployment of life-saving technologies on high-speed toll roads and freeways.

Since joining UCF in 1992, Al-Deek has secured more than $10 million in research funding and developed innovations that have resulted in multiple patents for the university while preparing the next generation of transportation engineers to make an impact on society. His honors include awards from the U.S. National Research Council’s Transportation Research Board.

Kevin Mackie, Al-Deek’s department chair, says his extensive efforts to improve highway safety and transportation “are contributions that touch the lives of all of us.”

Andrea Blanco-Redondo

Florida Photonics Center of Excellence Endowed Professor, College of Optics and Photonics

Andrea Blanco-Redondo is harnessing light to push the boundaries of quantum technology.

Her research develops scalable ways to generate and control quantum states of light — advances that could unlock new possibilities in computing, communications and information processing. She’s internationally known for discovering a new class of optical pulses that behave like a particle and can help researchers and industry shape what’s next. In three years at UCF, her scholarship has informed roughly two dozen conferences and produced papers in prestigious journals, including Science, Nature Materials, Nature Communications and Nature Photonics.

An Optica (Optical Society of America) Fellow, Blanco-Redondo also serves as chair of the SPIE OPTO Symposium at Photonics West, a premier annual conference of the international society for optics and photonics. Alongside her research and professional leadership, she mentors future scientists and helps expand opportunities in engineering and optics.

“Through internationally recognized scholarship, sustained external engagement and demonstrable impact, Dr. Blanco-Redondo exemplifies the UCF Luminary ideal through globally impactful work that both broadens understanding and inspires future scientists,” UCF College of Optics and Photonics Dean David Hagan says.

William Crampton

Professor, Department of Biology, College of Sciences

William Crampton’s research on electric fish is revealing extraordinary capabilities — and has even earned a world record.

A leading global authority in his field, Crampton recorded an 860-volt eel in the Amazon Basin, the highest voltage ever documented from a living organism, according to Guinness World Records. His work advances species discovery, documentation, and conservation while revealing principles of biological sensing relevant to radar, sonar, and autonomous sensing technologies.

In a recent study, Crampton and other UCF researchers uncovered how eels and knifefish strategically suppress their electric signals to avoid detection, balancing the need to sense their surroundings with the need to remain concealed. His open-source tools are also expanding how scientists study behavior in natural systems. Crampton’s discoveries have also reached audiences worldwide through major media outlets, including National Geographic.

“His recent work combines innovative discovery, international recognition and exceptional public visibility, producing scholarship that advances knowledge while capturing the imagination of both the scientific community and the public,” UCF Department of Biology Chair Eric Hoffman says.

Alan Fyall

Visit Orlando Endowed Chair of Tourism Marketing,

Alan Fyall is helping destinations worldwide rethink how tourism can better serve the people who visit and the communities that call them home.

His research addresses destination planning, travel accessibility, resilience, sustainability and tourism’s impact on communities. His appointment to the United Nations Pool of Experts for Global Reporting on the State of the Marine Environment brings UCF expertise into international ocean governance.

An elected fellow and leader with the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, Fyall has advised organizations and governments across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. His scholarship includes eight books, 105 peer-reviewed journal articles and more than 100 conference papers and editorials. The New York Times, USA Today and Forbes have featured his expertise.

“Dr. Fyall’s work connects local relevancy to global impact,” says Rosen College of Hospitality Management Dean Cynthia Mejia. “His research on accessible tourism through mega-events, the well-being impacts of tourism on residents and the vulnerability of coastal destinations to climate disruption is improving how communities around the world plan for and benefit from tourism.”

Ivan Garibay

Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Ivan Garibay is advancing artificial intelligence (AI) to confront challenges ranging from social media misinformation to disease.

He uses AI to model and predict complex human behavior and develops data-driven strategies to counter misinformation and propaganda. This year, he co-founded a biotechnology research company to commercialize AI research aimed at accelerating the search for cures for diseases – an effort supported by a patent filing.

Since joining UCF in 2016, Garibay has secured more than $36 million in research funding and testified before Congress about AI’s challenges and opportunities. The master’s program in data analytics he founded has produced 240 UCF graduates for the workforce.

His work has attracted media attention on four continents, including on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. His honors include election as an associate member of the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida.

“[Garibay] exemplifies the externally recognized, world-changing scholarship the Luminary Award celebrates,” says Waldemar Karwowski, chair of the UCF Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.

Claire Connolly Knox

Professor, School of Public Administration, College of Community Innovation and Education

Claire Connolly Knox is strengthening how communities prepare for and mitigate disasters, respond when they strike and recover in their aftermath.

Her nationally recognized research connects coastal resilience, emergency management, environmental vulnerability and equitable delivery of public services. Supported by millions of dollars in grant funding, her work informs federal policy, disaster response, emergency management capacity and strategies for building more resilient communities.

As founder and director of UCF’s Master of Emergency and Crisis Management program, Knox also helps prepare future leaders in the field. Her contributions have helped advance UCF’s homeland security and emergency management graduate programs, which U.S. News & World Report ranks No. 1 nationally.

Knox was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2024 — one of the field’s highest honors — and received the International Association of Emergency Managers’ 2025 Emergency Management Educator of the Year Award.

“Her sustained scholarly productivity, national prominence, public engagement and commitment to addressing complex societal challenges have enhanced UCF’s reputation while advancing more equitable and resilient communities,” says Bradley Heim, director of the UCF School of Public Administration.

Abdul-Akeem Sadiq

Professor, School of Public Administration, College of Community Innovation and Education

Abdul-Akeem Sadiq helps governments and communities prepare for complex threats while equipping the next generation of researchers to take them on.

His interdisciplinary research spans floods, infrastructure failures, human trafficking and other emerging crises. By examining disaster preparedness, emergency communication systems, organizational mitigation strategies and equitable disaster response, he generates insights that inform public policy and professional practice.

Sadiq also leads a U.S. National Science Foundation initiative to develop future hazards and disaster researchers. He recently brought scholars from across the nation to UCF to strengthen collaboration and workforce development in disaster science. His honors include election as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, one of the field’s highest distinctions.

“Dr. Sadiq has established himself as a nationally and internationally recognized scholar whose research, leadership and public engagement have significantly advanced the fields of emergency management and public administration while elevating UCF’s visibility as a leader in disaster resilience and public service scholarship,” Heim says.

Mel Stanfill

Professor, Texts and Technology Program and Department of English, College of Arts and Humanities

Mel Stanfill brings critical insight to the technologies and online communities reshaping digital culture.

In examining how technology, identity, law and economics influence cultural participation, Stanfill explores fandoms, music, AI, digital games, social media governance, parasocial relationships and more.

Stanfill’s book Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture earned the National Communication Association’s 2025 Diamond Anniversary Book Award for its analysis of politics, online communities and harassment.

Stanfill’s expertise has reached the public through commentary for NPR, The Guardian, National Geographic, Forbes, NBC News and Teen Vogue, bringing scholarly insight to contemporary conversations about technology and popular culture.

“Dr. Stanfill has made UCF a national player in the discussion of the cultural effects of technology,” UCF Department of English Chair James Campbell says. “UCF needs to be a place not just where new technology is conceived, but where it is questioned, critiqued, and has its cultural meanings and effects made clear, and Dr. Stanfill is making that happen.”

In aquatic ecosystems, some species use active sensing systems, emitting echolocation sounds or electric fields to navigate dark or murky waters.

This sensory ability can come with trade-offs. For electric eels and their weakly electric knifefish prey, generating electric fields helps them navigate and hunt, but those same signals can also reveal their location.

In a recent study published in , UCF researchers found that both electric eels and knifefish strategically suppress and resume their electric signals to avoid detection.

The findings provide new insight into how animals balance sensing their surroundings while remaining hidden from predators or prey, a challenge that also appears in technologies such as sonar and radar. This work also expands scientific understanding of how active sensory systems evolve in competitive environments where being detected can mean losing a meal or becoming one.

“Our findings show that active sensing creates a paradox: the same electric signals these animals need to navigate and hunt can also reveal them to eavesdropping predators or prey,” says Professor of Biology William Crampton, who co-led the study with biology doctoral graduate Lok Poon ’26PhD. “Both eels and knifefish appear to resolve this paradox through electric stealth, briefly suppressing their signals when concealment matters, then resuming them when sensing becomes more important.”

Tracking Electric Signals in the Amazon

To test these predator-prey interactions, the researchers deployed six custom-designed electric signal loggers along a 150-meter section of an Amazonian stream. Each logger recorded 60-second segments of electric signals over 27 nights. In total, nearly 107,000 minutes of data were collected.

“Electric fish are ideal for this kind of study because their signals let us monitor their presence and movements electronically, simply by recording how often they pass near submerged electrodes,” Crampton says. “Our loggers allowed us, for the first time, to monitor predator-prey electric signaling interactions continuously in the wild.”

Researchers then analyzed the recordings to distinguish species by their unique electric signal signatures.

How Eels and Knifefish Use “Electric Stealth”

“With knifefish, we found that when they detect electric eel signals, some flee while some pulse-type species switch off their own electric discharges for several seconds. “—William Crampton, professor of biology

“With knifefish, we found that when they detect electric eel signals, some flee while some pulse-type species switch off their own electric discharges for several seconds,” Crampton says. “In our logger recordings, a knifefish could be producing its normal train of pulses to sense its environment, then suddenly become electrically silent as soon as eel signals appeared.”

Laboratory tests showed that low-frequency components of electric eel signals play a key role in triggering this response, with knifefish reacting far less when those components were reduced.

Electric eels were also found to pause their low-voltage electrolocation pulses before high-voltage bursts used to probe for or stun prey. This silence would make an approaching eel less detectable to electroreceptive prey such as knifefish. Once the eel produces a high-voltage burst, however, it has revealed its presence, temporarily reducing the benefit of stealth. ��The eel promptly resumes its regular low-voltage pulses, likely to rapidly relocate, track or capture prey.

“The field recordings revealed these phenomena in the ecological context,” Crampton says. “The laboratory experiments then allowed us to isolate the eel signal features that trigger knifefish responses.”

Parallels in Nature and Technology

In nature, the only well-studied comparison to this behavior is the predator-prey dynamic between killer whales and their toothed-whale prey.

“Killer whales and smaller toothed whales such as beaked whales use echolocation, relying on sound rather than electric signals to sense their surroundings,” Crampton says. “Mammal-eating killer whales can suppress echolocation and calls while hunting, while beaked whales and other prey species may reduce vocal activity or take evasive action when they detect killer whale sounds. The eel-knifefish system shows a remarkably similar trade-off in the electric sense.”

The findings suggest convergent evolutionary pressures favoring the ability of both predators and prey to modulate active-sensing signals to improve survival.

Similar trade-offs also occur in human active-sensing technologies such as sonar and radar. A submarine, for instance, can use active signals to detect its surroundings, but each outgoing ping can also reveal the vessel’s location.

“Just as we found in electric eels and knifefish, operators of these systems balance the need to gather information with the need to remain hidden,” Crampton says. “In submarines, that can mean alternating between active sonar and passive listening depending on the situation.”

Electric eels, knifefish, echolocating whales and human operators all face the same challenge: balancing the benefits of active sensing with the risk of detection.

Future Research Applications

Electric fish have long contributed to scientists’ understanding of concepts beyond biology, including electricity, nerves and sensing.

“Electric fishes have played an outsized role in the history of biology and physics,” Crampton says. “For example, their discharges helped shape early research on electricity, including Alessandro Volta’s invention of the first battery, and their electric organs later became important model tissues for studying acetylcholine receptors — protein channels that help nerves send signals to other cells.”

The new findings build on this legacy, showing how electric fish can reveal principles related to sensing, stealth and decision making. Similar trade-offs shape sonar, radar and autonomous sensing technologies, suggesting that nature’s solutions to stealth and detection may offer insights for future adaptive sensing systems.

“This study shows that active sensing is not just about gathering information, but also about managing the risk of being detected,” Crampton says. “This opens opportunities for future research, from understanding how other aquatic species respond to electric signals to uncovering whether similar stealth strategies occur in other sensory systems.”

This work was funded by National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program grant 2035702 (L.P.), an American Philosophical Society Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research grant (L.P.), and National Science Foundation grant DEB-1146374 (W.G.R.C.).

From a biology professor who has been featured in two National Geographic Channel documentary films (William Crampton), to a Professor Emeritus who wrote the initial grant proposal to establish UCF’s highly ranked Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (Michael Moshell), and to a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist who is director of jazz studies (Jeffrey Rupert), the recipients were honored at a program and reception in the Student Union.

President John C. Hitt said the accomplishments recognized at the annual convocation continue to confirm the pursuit of excellence by those at the university.

One new honor presented this year was the Reach for the Stars Award, given to eight early-career professionals for their outstanding research or creative endeavors. The president said narrowing down the recipients was hard because there were so many noteworthy nominations, and he expects the choices will become more difficult in the years to come.

Awards also were given to honor excellence in teaching, advising, research, professional service, outstanding theses, length-of-service milestones and other categories.

A number of past winners and retirees joined employees, students, recipients’ families and friends, and others from the UCF community at the program.

For more on today’s winners, go to these stories:

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