Fun Facts

FUN FACTS!

 

Did you know….

  • The University of Central Florida and Florida International University are the 2nd and 4th respective largest universities in the nation.
  • FIU (#1) and UCF (#2) lead the State University System in STEM graduates!
  • Technology is the second largest and fastest growing industry in the Central Florida region.

UCF

University of Central Florida Highlights!

  • The UCF Programming Team’s 30+-year winning record is unmatched by any similar team in the nation.  A UCF team has always placed in the top three in the regional competitions (Florida, Georgia,  South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi) , with 16 first-place, 9 second-place, and 7 third-place wins. And in the World Contest Finals – representing the best of more than 8,000 teams world wide from over 90 countries – UCF has finished as high as second, fourth and fifth place, giving UCF the title of top 1 percent in the world.

Programming-Team-in-St-Pete-russia-summer-2013-CROP-495x396

World’s Top 50: UCF Programming Team – The University of Central

Florida’s most-winning competitive team returned from St. Petersburg,

Russia with an impressive ranking: as the world’s 48th best computer

programming team.

  • University of Central Florida students won the three-tiered 2014 Raytheon National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition held in April in San Antonia, Texas. The eight member team, known as the “Knights in Cyber Armor”, progressed to the national competition as one of ten regional finalists. The challenge of the competition was to keep their business running while fending off cyber attacks from a team of 20 professional hackers. The team earned the Alamo Cup, a billboard in Times Square, a $25,000 cyber security scholarship fund and a trip to the White House with Vice President Joe Biden sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.     CCDC_Team_JoeBiden_WhiteHouse

Biden praised the team’s championship win and spoke about the importance

of global cybersecurity that adapts to evolving threats. Michael Daniel, Special

Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator and Dr. Patricia

Falcone, Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs in

the White House  also gave the team  praise and thanks for their hard work

and dedication.

USF

University of South Florida Highlights!

  • The University of South Florida announces it has been granted the designation of a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/ Cybersecurity by the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

    NSA recently revised its criteria to make it more difficult to receive the Center of Academic Excellence designation. This is the first time USF has earned the prestigious recognition. USF is only the second school in the nation to be classified for the first time under the new standards.

In the official award letter, the NSA’s National CAE Program Director, Karen Leuschner, wrote about USF: “Your ability to meet the increasing demands of the program criteria will serve the nation well in contributing to the protection of the National Information Infrastructure.” The designation runs between the years 2014 and 2019.

  • USF is a Top 50 research university among both public and private institutions nationwide in total research expenditures, according to the National Science Foundation. Serving nearly 48,000 students, the USF System has an annual budget of $1.5 billion and an annual economic impact of $4.4 billion. USF ranks 13th in the nation for entrepreneurship and among the top 15 universities worldwide for U.S. patents (IPO/NAI), and is a member of the American Athletic Conference and a charter institution of the National Academy of Inventors.
  • Tampa Bay is a top place to work in technology according to SmartAsset, a software and data company focused on the financial industry.

  • Tampa ranked No. 10 in the nation in SmartAsset’s blog, which studied 200 cities in the United States by collecting data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on average wages for all workers, average wages for tech workers and the percentage of all workers who are employed in tech. In addition, cost of living played a major role in the methodology.

  • An excerpt from the blog states, “Tampa, on the west coast of Florida, has warm, sunny weather year round except for the occasional hurricane. The city is home to the headquarters of a number of Fortune 1000 companies, as well as the military aviation industry as personified by MacDill Air Force Base. About 3 percent of Tampa’s workers are in the tech industry.”

  • Five teams from the University of South Florida have been selected for the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Teams program by the National Science Foundation in 2014.

    USF has the most I-Corps teams in Florida this year and ranks third in the U.S., with the University of Michigan and Georgia Institute of Technology. Nationwide, 153 teams representing 91 universities were selected for I-Corps teams in 2014.

  • The five USF I-Corps teams include a diverse range of technologies, from robotics to biosensors.

  • Each team will receive a $50,000 grant and participate in an I-Corps Teams curriculum designed to provide real-world, hands-on, immersive learning to teach the researchers what it takes to successfully transition research out of the laboratory into commercially feasible products that benefit society.

  • The National Science Foundation (NSF) established the I-Corps Teams program to identify NSF-funded researchers, and provide them mentoring and funding in order to accelerate the translation of knowledge derived from fundamental research into emerging products and services.

  • I-Corps Teams are composed of a principal investigator who serves as technical lead and project manager, an entrepreneurial lead who is typically a postdoctoral researcher or graduate student with the technical knowledge and a commitment to the commercialization of the innovation, and a mentor with entrepreneurial experience.

  • The NSF I-Corps Team grants help to determine the readiness of each project team to transition technology developed by previously-funded or currently-funded NSF projects to market. By the end of the six-month program, team companies should have a clear indication of the commercial feasibility of their product and the knowledge required to move it forward.

FIU

Florida International University Highlights!

  • Florida International University was awarded the Cybersecurity Leadership and Innovation Award in the Education category by the Center for Digital Government on October 28. This award honors those in state and local government and education who have driven forward cybersecurity efforts in their communities. FIU was recognized for our commitment to data security, particularly for the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO), which centralizes security management on FIU’s devices. In addition, FIU was recognized for being one of the first public universities to offer both graduate and undergraduate degree programs in cybersecurity.