UF Explore Magazine | Fall 2025

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14 Buzz Off Fighting back against the world’s deadliest animal

22 28 34 Extracts News from around the university Engineering Peak Performance

Artifical intelligence meets athletic excellence

Drug Radar NDEWS detects the next drug epidemic

Designing Tomorrow, Today

Gatorade Turns 60

Cover photo by Zach Read

While sports have long been dictated by X’s and O’s, in the Information Age victory might be just as much about 0s and 1s.

As our cover story in this issue of Explore highlights, researchers in UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering who specialize in artificial intelligence are partnering with the University Athletic Association to analyze billions of data points gathered from hundreds of Gator athletes to help them reduce injury and optimize their performance.

In fact, data helped UF complete its historic run to the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship last spring by guiding coaches, strength and conditioning staff, and athletic trainers with training regimens so the players were ready for the grueling tournament schedule.

In another project, the College of Health and Human Performance and the Warrington College of Business are working with the basketball team to improve recruitment, player evaluation, scouting and game strategy using AI tools. You can see examples of this research all through this magazine:

• UF Health researchers are using AI to quickly and accurately analyze medical images for many types of cancers, including prostate and brain cancer.

• Architecture and construction researchers are scaling “digital twins” from individual buildings to citywide applications to support better decision-making about things like energy use and emergency response.

• Geography researchers are using AI to analyze thousands of images of tropical rainfall patterns to better predict which hurricanes are going to grow into the most destructive rain makers.

UF’s early commitment to AI has positioned us to recruit hundreds of new faculty and graduate students and compete for grants that wouldn’t even have been on our radar a decade ago. Led by Alina Zare, the Artificial Intelligence and Informatics Research Institute is creating even more connections among faculty.

“I believe one of the best ways to carry out meaningful research with impact is to tackle big challenges with a team that spans a diverse set of disciplines,” says Zare, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The institute is hosting mini-symposia each semester to bring together researchers from across the institution to discuss broad subjects like biodiversity and sports. It has also created AI Research Awards to recognize faculty and staff who have made exceptional and impactful research contributions in AI.

Over the last 5 years, AI has been integrated into more and more research projects and is reflected in our growing research portfolio, which reached a record $1.33 billion this year. Research funding models are constantly changing, but I am confident that UF researchers remain extremely competitive at securing funding to address society’s most pressing needs and to grow Florida’s economy.

David P. Norton, Ph.D. Vice President for Research

University of Florida research spending at record $1.33 billion for

FY2025, new awards at $1.25 billion

University of Florida faculty conducted a record $1.33 billion in research in fiscal year 2025, advancing new medical treatments, supporting Florida’s farmers and helping to grow statewide industries such as aerospace and semiconductors.

“This new record sends an unmistakable signal that the University of Florida’s research enterprise is a rock-solid powerhouse, and the important work our researchers are doing is absolutely vital to the great state of Florida, the nation and the world,” said Mori Hosseini, UF Board of Trustees chair. “We are grateful to our congressional delegation for their strong support, and we are eager to keep contributing to Florida’s unmatchable economic success.”

Total research expenditures were up about 4.5%, or $57.3 million, over FY 2024. Spending on federally funded projects awarded over the past several years was up 5.4% to $612.4 million, while spending on state-sponsored projects was up 14.5%, or $29.4 million, to $231.9 million. Industry-funded research was up 11.8% to $41.5 million, and projects supported by non-profits were up 10% to $60.3 million.

The research spending data is based on UF’s response to the National Science Foundation’s annual Higher Education Research and Development, or HERD, Survey, which is the national standard in comparing research spending across universities around the country. The numbers reflect spending for the fiscal year that ended June 30. In the most recently finalized HERD report, based on 2023 fiscal year data, UF ranked 15th among public universities and 25th overall.

Public and private agencies typically award multi-year funding to the university based on competitive proposals submitted by researchers. That funding translates into annual spending, or expenditures, on salaries, construction,

equipment and supplies; and other expenses over the life of the award.

Awards reached a record $1.25 billion in 2025, including $818 million from the federal government, $102 million from the State of Florida, and $140 million from philanthropic organizations. Here are some significant projects underway in 2025:

• UF Health Cancer Center researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health are developing artificial intelligence algorithms that are transforming medical image analysis, helping to improve diagnostic accuracy and lower health care costs for conditions like prostate cancer.

• The Florida Semiconductor Institute, created by the Florida Legislature, received funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce to use advanced computer simulations known as digital twins to improve how computer chips are designed and manufactured.

• A team of engineering faculty and students funded by NASA is testing advanced aluminum and stainless-steel coating materials designed to solve one of the most pressing technical challenges in deep space exploration: preventing the boil-off of cryogenic rocket fuels during long missions.

• Researchers from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences are testing a genetically modified citrus tree that can fight off the tiny insects responsible for citrus greening, which has caused citrus production to plummet over the past two decades.

Nearly half of the research spending was in the six colleges of UF Health, led by the College of Medicine in

Gainesville and Jacksonville with $369.4 million; the College of Pharmacy with $39.4 million; the College of Public Health & Health Professions with $36 million; the College of Veterinary Medicine with $33.5 million; the College of Dentistry with $20.8 million; and the College of Nursing with $6.3 million. In addition, the Wertheim UF Scripps Institute accounted for $101.2 million in research spending.

UF/IFAS, which has been the national leader in agricultural sciences and natural resources conservation research over the past six years according to the HERD survey, recorded $286.5 million in spending during FY 2025.

Engineers at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering conducted $181.6 million in research on such things as cybersecurity, semiconductors, storm readiness, retail theft deterrence, and robotics.

Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences had $62.3 million in expenditures, much of it in areas of basic research such as chemistry, biology and astronomy that feed into applied research in the other colleges.

UF also set a new record for the number of invention disclosures faculty submitted for discoveries that have commercialization potential. The university registered 446 technology disclosures, a substantial increase from the 369 disclosures reported in FY2024.

Reading the rain: AI unlocks hurricane secrets

Studying precipitation patterns in hurricanes may be key to predicting future storms and their potential strength.

Supported by a four-year, $212,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, UF geography Professor Corene Matyas has identified unique patterns of rain rates within storms and studied the moisture surrounding these storms.

“We are hoping that, if we have a better prediction of moisture availability, that might help us forecast rain events with greater accuracy,” Matyas said. “The more we know about how storms develop, the more we can predict their path and magnitude.”

Early predictions are crucial to hurricane preparedness, allowing for increased response time and resource allocation, and hurricane modeling is essential for understanding storm tracks and strength. Advances in technology, data collection and the use of artificial intelligence have significantly impacted hurricane modeling.

Matyas has completed two studies on this topic. The first processed 12,000

images of rain rates from tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic, using a machine learning algorithm called a convolutional autoencoder. Similar in use to image recognition software, the encoder broke the rain rate images down and simplified the patterns. Six main types, or clusters, of rainfall patterns for tropical cyclones were identified.

At a presentation of the work to forecasters at the National Weather Service office in Jacksonville, the forecasters confirmed that one of the patterns matches what they typically see when late-season storms make landfall over Florida’s Gulf Coast.

A second study used the autoencoder to process 4,600 images that represent the amount of moisture in the atmosphere extending 1,000 kilometers away from each hurricane.

“We looked for commonalities in the patterns and found four dominant patterns of moisture that accompany Atlantic basin hurricanes,” Matyas said. “We found the biggest storms with the most moisture make the most landfalls, typically in the Caribbean and even in

southern Florida. They also have a large moisture pool, giving them a bigger chance of heavy rainfall.”

With AI, Matyas said researchers can now recognize and understand these moisture patterns better, which can improve predictions about a storm’s intensity, its size and the amount of rain it will produce.

“We tend to boil down a hurricane to a set of coordinates which track the middle of a storm,” Matyas said. “And the fastest winds do focus there, but the moisture gets pulled from thousands of kilometers away and the system forces the moisture up. That moisture must go somewhere. So, the outer edges of the storm need to be understood more as well.”

Matyas hopes these studies will help scientists classify rain patterns more accurately and consistently. Continued funding for research at public universities from federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is essential for helping researchers develop tools to detect and predict severe weather events.

Kathryn Pizzurro

Metal from petals: Extracting nickel with plants

Jeongim Kim and J. Scott Angle are working to perfect a new kind of nickel mining one plant at a time.

Their focus is on the milkwort jewelflower, a diminutive flowering herb that’s especially good at absorbing nickel from soil. Kim, a plant biochemist, has a singular goal: Engineering bigger plants that yield even more nickel.

Phytomining is a relatively new approach to extracting metals. A U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist first proposed the idea in 1983. By the 1990s, Angle was working on ways to stop heavy metals from entering the food chain. That’s when he got involved with botanists studying “hyperaccumulator” plants that absorb high levels of metals. Their first work was extracting zinc, which proved not to be economically viable. When the focus shifted to nickel, the jewelflower was initially overlooked due to its size, said Angle, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

Now, events are pushing the jewelflower to potential prominence: The country’s only nickel mine in northern Michigan is expected to shut down in 2026. Ecological and regulatory issues have made domestic phytomining with non-native plants more challenging. Opening a new, traditional nickel mine in the U.S. is fraught with high costs and long timelines.

About two years ago, Angle began working with Kim to develop a larger, more efficient jewelflower. Kim is nearly finished sequencing the plant’s genome, a crucial step in identifying the genetic sequences that are modified to boost the plant’s size and nickel-extraction efficiency. So far, they’ve coaxed the jewel flower from a single-stem, 18-inch plant to specimens that are 24-inch with 10 to 20 stems. The project was started with venture capital money but Kim now has a

“We are pretty close to where phytomining is an acceptable economic technology. The jewelflower plants are big enough. The nickel uptake is high enough. We think it’s probably going to be commercially viable.”

Jeongim Kim

three-year, $1.9 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.

But can acres of a new cultivar essentially replace a sprawling, traditional mine? Yes, Angle said, because the jewelflower is remarkably efficient. The goal is to achieve 2% nickel in the plant about four times the concentration found in mined ore. In mountain foothills from California and

Oregon to Maryland, Pennsylvania and Alabama, massive swaths of nickel-rich soils could become prime grounds for jewelflower fields.

Harvesting metal ore from plants also has significant environmental benefits over traditional nickel mining, said Kim, an associate professor of horticultural sciences for IFAS. Traditional nickel mining can be land and energy intensive and lead to toxic mine tailings and other environmental issues. Burning the jewelflower for energy and refining the ash, which contains 40-50% nickel, is also a possibility.

“Compared with smelting from rock, this plant material is relatively better for the environment,” Kim said. “While we’re growing the plant, we actually reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Nickel finds its way into a host of products, including stainless steel, electric-vehicle batteries, jet engines and aerospace components. While phytomining is not expected to fully satisfy the domestic demand for nickel, Angle said it’s potentially a key part of reducing dependence on foreign sources. While specific plants usually only absorb one metal, Angle said other known hyperaccumulators could be used for different metals.

“We are pretty close to where phytomining is an acceptable economic technology. The jewelflower plants are big enough. The nickel uptake is high enough. We think it’s probably going to be commercially viable,” he said.

Still, there are plenty of reasons to keep pushing for larger plants that absorb more metal. That makes it an even more valuable endeavor which leads to wider adoption of phytomining.

“More is always better,” Angle said. Doug Bennett

Milkwort Jewelflower

Pain relief without opioid perils

UFpharmacy researchers have helped identify a novel drug compound that selectively activates pain-altering receptors in the body, offering a potentially safer alternative to conventional pain medications.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers describe how this compound provides pain relief without the dangerous side effects commonly associated with opioids administered to patients. The National Institutes of Health funded the study.

The human body relies on three kinds of opioid receptors to regulate pain, much like traffic control systems on a busy highway. Understanding these pathways is key to developing safer pain treatments. Medications working at mu receptors stop pain traffic to provide rapid relief, but with risks like dangerous respiratory depression and addiction. Most current pain medications target the mu receptor, but UF researchers are pioneering a new

strategy focused on the delta opioid receptor, which could offer pain relief with fewer side effects.

“Delta receptors are located throughout the body on pathways and neurons that transmit pain signals to the brain,” said Jay McLaughlin, a professor of cellular and systems pharmacology and the CVS/Pharmacy Inc. Professor in the UF College of Pharmacy. “Unlike mu receptors, activating delta receptors does not cause respiratory depression. If we can develop drugs that safely target the delta receptor, we might achieve effective pain relief without the lethal concerns.”

The need for safer pain treatments is urgent. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly a fourth of U.S. adults experienced chronic pain in 2023, with almost one in 10 suffering from pain severe enough to limit daily activities. Studies estimate that the economic burden of chronic pain exceeds $600 billion annually.

“Chronic pain is an ongoing problem that significantly impacts quality of life,” McLaughlin said. “With an aging population, it’s urgent that we identify new pain therapies that minimize harmful side effects.”

For the past three years, a team of scientists at UF, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Southern California has been studying how opioid receptors work and applying those insights to develop better and safer pain medications.

The main problem with delta receptors has been the potential for seizures, which has stopped these treatments from being widely used. The research team found a way around this by modifying an existing drug to target a specific area of the delta receptor, giving it the ability to provide pain relief without the harmful effects of traditional opioids.

“Applying new insights into receptor function, our novel compound demonstrated pain-relieving effects in mouse models without major opioid-related side effects like respiratory depression,” McLaughlin said. “This is a significant advance in science, because if we can design safer medications using this approach, it could extend beyond pain relief to treating heart disease, blood pressure and other conditions regulated by receptors with similar functional features.”

McLaughlin emphasized that additional research and clinical trials are needed to validate the safety and effectiveness of targeting delta opioid receptors for treating pain.

Matthew Splett

Jay McLaughlin

Gut feeling: Scientists crack micronutrient’s

cellular secret

An international team of scientists, co-led by researchers at UF and Trinity College Dublin, has cracked a decades-old mystery in human biology: how our bodies absorb a micronutrient that we rely on for everything from healthy brain function to cancer defense.

Queuosine pronounced “cue-oscene” is a vitamin-like micronutrient that we can’t make ourselves but can only get from food and our gut bacteria. It’s vital to our health, yet its importance went unnoticed for decades.

Now, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have discovered the gene that allows queuosine to enter the cells, a discovery that opens the door for potential therapies to be created to leverage the micronutrient’s role in cancer suppression, memory and how the brain learns new information.

“For over 30 years, scientists have suspected that there had to be a transporter for this nutrient, but no one could find it,” said Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, a UF/IFAS microbiology and cell science distinguished professor and one of the study’s principal investigators. “We’ve been hunting for it for a long time. This discovery opens up a whole new chapter in understanding how the microbiome and our diet can influence the translation of our genes.”

The study was funded by various nations’ health entities, including the National Institutes of Health, Research Ireland and Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland.

Queuosine modifies the molecules that help make proteins, called transfer RNA, which is essential in decoding your body’s DNA.

“It’s like a nutrient that fine-tunes how your body reads your genes.”

—  Valérie de Crécy-Lagard

“It’s like a nutrient that fine-tunes how your body reads your genes,” she said. “The idea that this small compound, which people have barely heard of, plays such an important role is fascinating.”

The gene that allows access to the cell has also been shrouded in medical mystery. The identification of the longsought gene, SLC35F2, lays the groundwork for future studies that could lead to new medications, given that the gene has previously been studied regarding how viruses and cancer drugs get into cells, but scientists didn’t know what the gene did in a healthy body until now, de Crécy-Lagard said.

“We have known for a long time that queuosine influences critical processes like brain health, metabolic regulation, cancer and even responses to stress, but

until now we haven’t known how it is salvaged from the gut and distributed to the billions of human cells that take it in,” said Vincent Kelly, professor in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Biochemistry and Immunology, and joint senior author of the article.

Queuosine is a microscopic molecule first discovered in the 1970s, but for years its role in human health flew under the radar until recently, and researchers from across the world involved in this study hope others take notice about this micronutrient’s role in the body’s bigger health picture.

The research united experts from UF, San Diego State University, The Ohio State University and partner institutions in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

“We don’t think we could have cracked it without the full team,” de Crécy-Lagard said. “It’s a perfect example of what international collaboration can achieve.”

Meredith Bauer

Study finds 40% drop in U.S. reading for pleasure

Asweeping new study from the University of Florida and University College London has found that daily reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by more than 40% over the last 20 years raising urgent questions about the cultural, educational and health consequences of a nation reading less.

Published in August in the journal iScience, the study analyzed data from over 236,000 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey between 2003 and 2023. The findings suggest a fundamental cultural shift: fewer people are carving out time in their day to read for enjoyment.

“This is not just a small dip it’s a sustained, steady decline of about 3% per year,” said Jill Sonke, director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the EpiArts Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts research lab at UF in partnership with University College London. “It’s significant, and it’s deeply concerning.”

The decline wasn’t evenly spread across the population. Researchers found steeper drops among Black Americans than white Americans, people with lower income or educational attainment, and those in rural (versus metropolitan)

areas highlighting deepening disparities in reading access and habits.

“While people with higher education levels and women are still more likely to read, even among these groups, we’re seeing shifts,” said Jessica Bone, senior research fellow in statistics and epidemiology at University College London. “And among those who do read, the time spent reading has increased slightly, which may suggest a polarization, where some people are reading more while many have stopped reading altogether.”

The researchers also noted some more promising findings, including that reading with children did not change over the last 20 years. However, reading with children was a lot less common than reading for pleasure, which is concerning given that this activity is tied to early literacy development, academic success and family bonding, Bone said.

Reading for pleasure has long been recognized not just as a tool for education, but as a means of supporting mental health, empathy, creativity and lifelong learning. The EpiArts Lab, which uses large data sets to examine links between the arts and health, has previously identified clear associations between creative engagement and well-being.

“Reading has historically been a low-barrier, high-impact way to engage creatively and improve quality of life,” Sonke said. “When we lose one of the simplest tools in our public health toolkit, it’s a serious loss.”

The American Time Use Survey offers a unique window into these trends.

“We’re working with incredibly detailed data about how people spend their days,” Bone said. “And because it’s a representative sample of U.S. residents in private households, we can look not just at the national trend, but at how it plays out across different communities.”

While causes were not part of the study, the researchers point to multiple potential factors, including the rise of digital media, growing economic pressures, shrinking leisure time and uneven access to books and libraries.

“Our digital culture is certainly part of the story,” Sonke said. “But there are also structural issues limited access to reading materials, economic insecurity and a national decline in leisure time. If you’re working multiple jobs or dealing with transportation barriers in a rural area, a trip to the library may just not be feasible.”

The study’s authors say that

interventions could help slow or reverse the trend, but they need to be strategic.

“Reading with children is one of the most promising avenues,” said Daisy Fancourt, a professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London and co-director of the EpiArts Lab. “It supports not only language and literacy, but empathy, social bonding, emotional development and school readiness.”

Bone added that creating more community-centered reading opportunities could also help: “Ideally, we’d make local libraries more accessible and attractive, encourage book groups, and make reading a more social and supported activity not just something done in isolation.”

The study underscores the importance of valuing and protecting access to the arts not only as a matter of culture, but as a matter of public health.

“Reading has always been one of the more accessible ways to support well-being,” Fancourt said. “To see this kind of decline is concerning because the research is clear: reading is a vital health-enhancing behavior for every group within society, with benefits across the life-course.”

Karen Dooley

Home test could revolutionize cervical cancer screening

Researchers are one step closer to developing a simple, at-home test to prevent cervical cancer or treat it earlier, a study from University of Florida Health Cancer Center and Purdue University researchers has found.

“Our results pave the way for us to develop inexpensive, fast and accurate preliminary screening tests for cervical cancer,” said Sulma Mohammed, the study’s senior author. “This test has the potential to transform early-stage cervical cancer diagnosis and treatment, particularly in areas with limited access to health care.”

Cervical cancer is the world’s fourth most common cancer in women. When it’s found early, it’s one of the most preventable and treatable cancers. The main screening method is an in-person Pap smear. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first at-home self-collection device, which screens for HPV, the virus that causes nearly all cervical cancers.

Still, these methods can be expensive, time-consuming and not always available. A new method based on measuring cellular proteins could reduce the need for expensive laboratory equipment and training.

In the new National Cancer Institute-funded study, researchers validated four proteins that were more abundant in swabs from women with high-grade

precancerous lesions and tissue samples from other patients.

They found the proteins could be used as sensitive and specific biomarkers to indicate precancerous lesions and distinguish subtypes of cervical cancer. Precancerous lesions can usually be successfully treated, preventing cancer from developing. Knowing the subtype tells health care providers how aggressive or fast-moving the cancer is, helping them develop a treatment plan.

Next, the researchers plan to develop a standardized way to collect and process cervical cancer samples, paving the way for a point-of-care test. Point-of-care tests are portable tests that can be done in more convenient settings than a traditional medical laboratory, and they’re usually faster.

“This test would provide an affordable and scalable solution for improving cervical cancer prevention throughout the world,” said Mohammed, co-leader of the UF Health Cancer Center’s Cancer Control and Population Sciences research program.

The study was featured on the cover of the June edition of the journal Cancers. Mohammed, a professor in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine’s small animal clinical sciences department, collaborated with researchers at Purdue University, where she worked before joining UF last year.

Leah Buletti

Protecting pollinators from pesticides

Years ago, when purchasing a flat of pansies at a garden center, Chris Wilson noticed a label indicating the flowers had been treated with insecticides.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘But bees can’t read labels,’” said Wilson, interim chair of the UF/IFAS soil, water and ecosystem sciences department.

That thought inspired Wilson’s research project, a joint effort with his wife, Professor Sandra Wilson of the UF/IFAS environmental horticulture department. Combining Chris Wilson’s expertise in environmental chemistry and toxicology and Sandra Wilson’s knowledge of plant physiology and horticulture, they decided to explore the relationship between pesticide management practices, plants and pollinators.

Funded by a $750,000 grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the Wilsons are working to minimize pollinator exposure to toxic concentrations of insecticides commonly used in the country’s $21 billion ornamental horticulture industry.

Pollinators like bees, butterflies and hummingbirds depend on flowering plants for nectar and pollen, but these food sources could become contaminated by some types of pesticides used to protect the plants from harmful pests and diseases. Ingestion or contact with harmful pesticides can cause behavioral changes in insect pollinators, including disorientation, tremors and poor reproduction. The effects can also be lethal.

“Pollinators, which we are trying to support by planting flowering ornamentals, may be unintentionally harmed by our efforts to help them,” Sandra Wilson said.

One of the key goals of the Wilsons’ project is to understand how pesticide application decisions influence contamination of nectar and pollen and to then develop guidance for growers to minimize the likelihood of sending plants to market

that may present high risks to pollinators.

Through this research, “We are hoping to find a middle ground for pesticide applications in ornamental container plant production and protection of pollinators from exposures,” said Vanesa Rostán, a doctoral student in the UF/IFAS soil, water, and ecosystem sciences department who is working with the Wilsons.

Early tests examined concentrations of thiamethoxam, a broad-spectrum, systemic insecticide, in the nectar of Indigo Spires salvia and showed method, rate and timing of pesticide application are significantly influential.

Low-rate applications of thiamethoxam yielded some of the starkest results. In plants that had yet to bloom, drenching the soil with the pesticide led to concentrations that were 117 times higher than spraying the pesticide. In plants that had bloomed, drenching led to concentrations that were 55 times higher than spraying.

“I was initially expecting that spray-applied pesticides would result in higher concentrations because that technique applies the pesticide right where the flowers are,” Chris Wilson said. “But

drenching resulted in concentrations that were orders of magnitude higher. For me, that was eye-opening.”

When the Wilsons studied thiamethoxam’s effect on lantana nectar as part of a second, not yet-published study, they found that spraying it on the plants didn’t result in detectable concentrations in most cases. Drench applications, however, resulted in increasingly higher concentrations as the rate increased and the flower buds matured.

“The lack of detectable sprayed pesticide found in nectar came as a surprise, but the woody texture of lantana leaves may prevent absorption,” said Mia Cabrera, a UF/IFAS graduate student in environmental horticulture working on the project.

In addition to publishing their research, the Wilsons and the students plan to share results with growers through future workshops and informational videos. Ultimately, they would like to work with the ornamental industry to develop best management practices for pesticide application and pollinator protection. Megan Winslow

Doctoral student Vanesa Rostán selects a lantana flower from which to extract nectar.

Tyler Jones

Tracking ‘forever chemicals’ in Florida’s water

Like diamonds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are forever.

PFAS, the hardiest of man-made chemicals, are like gum on the bottom of your shoe but far more sinister. Used in consumer and industry products since the 1940s, they can linger in the outdoors for decades, loiter in the human body for up to 35 years, and are linked to a growing list of negative health effects, including cancer.

Now, University of Florida researchers are documenting just how many are found in the state’s surface water, including its prized freshwater springs, which provide 90% of the drinking water to its inhabitants.

John A. Bowden, an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and a team of more than 100 UF undergraduates and citizen-scientist volunteers fanned out across 67 counties in Florida. Their mission: An in-depth analysis of chemicals in the state’s surface water, which included over 50 springs.

What they found was sobering. In the initial 2024 study, some 90 water samples from 50 Florida springs were analyzed for the presence of 29 PFAS. The chemicals were detected in 63% of the samples from spring vents and 68% of the spring run samples, or the flowing body of water that originates from the vent. There were 13 quantifiable PFAS present across all samples. Green Springs, Blue Spring, and

Gemini Spring held the highest PFAS concentrations.

“This issue isn’t something we can magically resolve,” Bowden said. “It will persist because, as a society, we demand the use of these chemicals for their practical benefits in thousands of everyday products, like preventing grease leakage, nonstick cookware, or clothes staining.”

One new offender is the standard smart and fitness watch band, which is coated with PFAS to keep oils and sweat from staining the band.

“Once objects with PFAS are disposed of, these chemicals can be released into the environment,” Bowden said. “Unfortunately, they retain the same properties that make them resistant to breakdown, which poses significant dangers.”

Notably, seven spring sites exceeded the federal standard of 4 parts-per-trillion of PFAS all within 10 miles of each other on the east coast of Florida near Deltona.

Now, Bowden’s team has launched an interactive map to track PFAS in all Florida water systems. The map displays PFAS concentrations across all of Florida’s water bodies, including springs – the result of a collection of more than 2,300 samples. A user can see every location where Bowden’s team has collected data and the PFAS concentrations at every site.

“As I started learning about this, I realized that this was not just a temporary problem; it was one that would be around

for a long time,” said Bowden, a chemist who applies novel techniques to solve environmental and wildlife problems.

Currently, most wastewater treatment facilities remove less than 10% of PFAS.

“Most of the contaminants in the processed material are dumped back into our waterways,” Bowden said. “If our drinking water comes from these sources, it will often contain PFAS. What should be alarming for all Floridians is that in the springs, which are often destined for use as drinking water, PFAS are present.”

Bowden’s work measures these emerging chemicals in different contexts, including wildlife tissues, human blood, and landfills. What was surprising to Bowden was how little people knew about them, considering there are thousands of PFAS chemicals in use.

Due to the groundwork Bowden and his research assistants laid for the data collection, his lab has created a crowdsourcing-based network of Floridians invested in environmental health and helping with ongoing studies, like another 2024 study that measured PFAS in over 400 drinking water taps across Florida. Ultimately, the data collection was made possible by those outside of the lab not just in it.

“While you can’t avoid PFAS entirely, it’s important to stay informed, think critically, and make good decisions when the opportunity arises,” Bowden said.

Dorothy Hagmajer

Fighting back against the world’s deadliest animal

Buzz Off

By Doug Bennett

University of Florida researcher Daniel Swale describes his work in the simplest of terms: He studies the most lethal creature on Earth.

“Mosquitoes are a nuisance to us in the United States but, in other parts of the world, it’s a life-or-death issue,” he says. “Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal in the world.”

Worldwide, mosquito-borne diseases result in more than 1 million deaths each year, according to the American Mosquito Control Association.

Swale is one of UF’s “mosquito hunters” researchers who track and combat the insects. While not part of a formal team, they’re united by a shared insect interest: Swale focuses on developing new insecticides and techniques that kill mosquitoes or prevent them from feeding and spreading diseases. Medical geography Professor Sadie Ryan tracks the patterns of mosquito-borne diseases across countries and continents. Entomologist Lawrence Reeves is the first line of mosquito defense, combing Florida’s swamps and wildlands in search of new species and identifying specimens from the state’s mosquito control districts.

For Swale, the career path to being a mosquito expert was a lot like the insect’s flight pattern anything but a straight line. He earned his doctoral degree in insect neurotoxicology at UF in 2012. After that, he left the insect world to work at Vanderbilt University on drug development for diabetes and high blood pressure. He returned to the insect

by Tyler Jones

Photography

“

The work funded by the Gates Foundation has potential to lead to the discovery of new insecticides that can be incorporated into the pipeline for development and hopefully be used in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce the malaria burden.”

Daniel Swale

An assay plate containing bed net material is used to discover chemicals that are toxic to mosquitoes that transmit pathogens causing human diseases, such as malaria or dengue fever.

world in 2015, joining the entomology faculty at Louisiana State University. His research aimed to define the physiological role of understudied systems in different insect tissues.

Swale came full circle with UF in 2022, landing a job in the same building where he earned his doctoral degree. He now serves as an associate professor of insect toxicology and physiology and is the associate director of training and special projects at the Emerging Pathogens Institute.

In late 2024, Swale earned a three-year, $2.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to control the malaria mosquito. Because of chronically high levels of insecticide resistance among mosquitoes, he is using an innovative method to speed up the discovery and development of new ingredients to kill them. The goal is to identify five to 10 natural or man-made “scaffolds” substances that kill mosquitoes after they land on a treated surface such as a bed net. Swale and his team will then optimize the chemical structure to make them more lethal to mosquitoes and safe for people, animals and honey bees.

That work is particularly important because the long-term pipeline for new insecticides especially for mosquitoes is “pretty bleak,” Swale says. The agrochemical industry regularly develops insecticides for pests that attack soybeans, corn, cotton and other cash crops. Mosquitoes, he notes, not so much.

“The work funded by the Gates Foundation has potential to lead to the discovery of new insecticides that can be incorporated into the pipeline for development and hopefully be used in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce the malaria burden,” he says.

The compounds being developed by Swale and his colleagues can also be used in the United States and other regions to control mosquitoes that transmit other pathogens, such as the dengue and Zika viruses, to humans.

A mosquito larvae is dissected to expose its central nervous system. This is used to assess changes in the firing rate of its nervous system after exposure to potential novel mosquitocides. Disturbing neural firing activity can negatively affect mosquito survival.

Swale’s other mosquito research includes Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding to develop new mosquitocides and repellents with a focus on discovering naturally occurring chemicals. Additionally, a $1.9 million National Institutes of Health grant aims to better understand how bacteria change the feeding behavior and biology of certain arthropods, allowing diseases to spread more easily.

“Once we understand how this happens, we can develop approaches to prevent pathogen transmission from arthropods to humans,” Swale says.

Across Swale’s human and insect research through the years, there was one constant: an abiding interest in ion channels the gatekeepers between the inside and outside of cells.

“When you modify the function of these channels with a chemical, you can change the function of a particular cell and elicit a desired response. It’s a way to kill an insect and it’s also an approach used for various human pharmaceuticals to reduce impacts of various diseases. But in humans, we can use pharmaceuticals to either enhance or kill a particular system,” he says.

Swale is particularly interested in better understanding the role potassium ion channels play in insects and testing their toxicological relevance. Despite the channels’ importance for cellular function, few insecticides target those pathways. Swale hopes to address that gap in technology by developing new, potassium-directed compounds.

“Essentially, we want to know what these understudied channels are doing in the insect. Can we kill the insect or prevent it from feeding by modifying the function of these channels with chemistry?” he says.

A 2022 study by Swale’s group found that dengue-carrying mosquitoes need effective salivary glands to feed efficiently and transmit the virus to a host. They later showed that modifying potassium ion channels’ function in mosquitoes’ salivary glands prevented salivation and

A chemical in the blood (shown in blue) goes into the salivary glands (also shown in blue), making the insect unable to feed due to constriction around the mouth.

inhibited blood feeding. That, in turn, reduced mosquitoes’ ability to catch and transmit the dengue virus or other arboviruses.

“When we manipulate that system, it shuts off the salivary gland and gives them dry mouth. Similar to humans, without saliva, the mosquito can’t feed. So, the mosquito doesn’t suck blood,” he says.

Through NIH and USDA funding, Swale has shown the same technique of

inhibiting salivary gland function with potassium ion channels also has applications in other insects, including ticks and plant-eating pests such as aphids and Asian citrus psyllids that spread citrus greening disease.

Before long, Swale hopes to develop a new insecticide just for mosquitoes. That would buck a longtime trend of repurposing other agricultural chemicals to fight mosquitoes, he says.

By

2050, temperatures in Alaska will be conducive for a species of mosquito that carries the malaria parasite, research by Sadie Ryan and her colleagues found.

A worldwide hunt

Ryan, the medical geographer, documents the big-picture patterns and movement of mosquito-borne diseases around the world. That helps the world anticipate how malaria, dengue fever and the Zika virus spread with population and climate changes.

One day nearly two decades ago, her work took an intensely personal turn. After doing research in Ghana, Ryan caught a flight to California and then another to Tennessee. Along the way, she developed an intense fever and high-pitched cough.

“I was virtually incapacitated flying home to California. Then, it hit me: Do I have malaria?” she says.

Her husband considered flying to Canada to get artesunate, a drug that kills the malaria parasites in red blood cells. After days in isolation, Ryan’s 107-degree fever eventually broke. She vividly recalls the hallucinations brought on by malaria and local mosquito-control experts hanging traps outside her home as a precaution against further spread.

Ironically, Ryan’s Ghana trip wasn’t even about mosquito research. She was there to study parasites in baboons. But long before that, Ryan had written a junior-year paper about malaria in populations with high rates of HIV.

“I was already fascinated and really curious about this disease that’s been with us absolutely forever,” she says. “And I wanted to know the best ways to respond to it globally.”

These days, Ryan stays busy tracking mosquito movements that shift with climate patterns. There’s no shortage of work: Many regions of the United States are seeing longer mosquito seasons due to warmer temperatures.

In 2024, Ryan and her collaborators found that climate change could drive a shift in the range of Anopheles stephensi , a mosquito that transmits malaria. Known as a common malaria mosquito in the Middle East and India, it has left its original range and spread to parts of Africa. Their work was the first of its kind to use mapped temperature-driven models for current malaria transmission risks posed by Anopheles stephensi . That allows scientists and policymakers to compare risks for malaria and other diseases using climate and geographic variables.

More broadly, Ryan says medical geography helps quantify the patterns of how diseases spread and provides tools to capture that. The best-known examples of that are the COVID-19 dashboards that appeared during the pandemic.

“Medical geography gives us a language to talk about the context and mechanisms of change in a changing world,” Ryan says. “I use maps as a way to communicate public-health interventions or to reach decision makers: Where should we be anticipating change? Where should we be thinking about allocating resources? For me, that’s a really powerful tool to get the science translated to action.”

Khary

Khalfani

“Medical geography gives us a language to talk about the context and mechanisms of change in a changing world.”

Sadie Ryan

Her work is funded through multiyear, multi-institution research projects. She is a co-principal investigator on a trio of National Science Foundation projects as well as grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wellcome Trust.

Another of Ryan’s most important works detailed how climate change is driving the global expansion and redistribution of mosquito-borne viruses. Within the next century, a worst-case scenario could put nearly 1 billion people at risk of new exposure to viruses carried by the Aedes aegypti (yellow fever mosquitoes) and Aedes albopictus (“Asian tiger”) mosquitoes, the researchers found. The two mosquitoes can spread a host of diseases, including dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika.

Her work also revealed which regions of the world would be facing new risks in the future: The United States, Canada, Europe and east Asia are among the areas at risk for new establishment of Aedes albopictus. Meanwhile, its transmission potential is expected to drop in tropical Latin America, western Africa and most of southeast Asia if temperatures keep rising.

“It’s important to know where these diseases could pop up, so we can plan for intervention,” Ryan says.

For Ryan, tracking long-term mosquito trends involves analyzing data and insect movements. The insects are opportunistic and adaptable, hitching rides on international cargo and moving into new areas that were once inhospitable. Once the province of the tropics, mosquitoes carrying the dengue virus have appeared in

France and, more prevalently, Italy. Aedes albopictus, which Ryan calls the “cooler weather mosquito”, has turned up in some unexpected places like Chicago storm drains and tires in snow piles in Boston.

Intensifying development also presents opportunities for mosquitoes to adapt and proliferate. The yellow fever mosquito is a particularly opportunistic urban dweller. Undisturbed puddles and neglected containers can be fertile breeding grounds –with plenty of humans to feed on nearby. That’s one thing that propels Ryan and her work.

“I’m really fascinated by these mosquitoes and what happens when you include their invasive abilities on top of their known dynamics,” she says. “That brings a whole new element of what we need to be watching. And how on earth do you do interventions to control them?”

At home in the swamps

As an entomologist, Lawrence Reeves sees mosquitoes differently than most Floridians. That even trickles down to his yard work. Reeves is always looking at the mosquitoes that are biting him. Instead of swatting the pests, he tries to identify them. On a recent day, Reeves saw an Aedes scapularis which can transmit yellow fever feeding on him. It was a species familiar to Reeves. He and his collaborators were the first to document its arrival in mainland Florida. The mosquito Reeves caught in his yard is the species’ northernmost specimen ever found.

“I ran inside with this mosquito on my arm to get a collection tube. Now, it’s in my freezer,” he says.

Reeves’ work takes him to the front lines of mosquito hunting, tromping through swamps and along river banks in search of newly arrived species. At the Florida Medical Entomology Lab near Vero Beach, he uses DNA to catalog types of mosquitoes and their ranges information that can be crucial to the state’s 63 mosquito control districts. By analyzing the DNA in mosquito blood meals, Reeves also sheds new light on how pathogens move through the environment and potentially affect humans.

In 2023, Reeves and his collaborators found that a new mosquito species, Culex lactator, had established a permanent presence in three Florida counties. After first being detected in Miami-Dade County in 2018, new populations of the species were identified more than 100 miles northwest in the Fort Myers and Naples areas, and more than 50 miles north into Broward

and Palm Beach counties. Scientists are still working to determine if the species is a carrier of West Nile virus, which Reeves considers the most consistent and widespread mosquito-borne disease threat in Florida. Two years before the 2023 findings, Reeves and his team made another big discovery: The first populations of Aedes scapularis were in mainland Florida. Before that, just three larvae of that mosquito were found only once before in the Florida Keys in the 1940s.

Being vigilant about new mosquito species is crucial because their arrival raises the risk of transmitted diseases, Reeves says. Of about 90 known mosquito species in Florida, about 18 are non-native. Six of the 17 most recent non-native mosquito species have been identified in the past seven years.

“We have DNA sequences for 95% of the mosquitoes that are known in the state. Anytime we find something that looks questionable or new, we sequence the DNA to compare with the known species and determine if a specimen represents something known or unknown,” says Reeves, an assistant professor of entomology.

Most of Reeves’ funding comes from federal and state agriculture departments. His other work includes research to better understand how malaria spread during a 2023 outbreak in Florida. State funding also supports UF’s Applied Mosquito Research Program, which addresses pesticide issues and general mosquito control. Under that program, Reeves works to make mosquito control more sustainable

Aedes aegypti (yellow fever mosquito)

Pathogens: yellow fever, dengue, Zika and chikungunya viruses

Regions: Aedes aegypti occurs in tropical and subtropical regions, but the pathogens it transmits vary by region.

Dengue is found worldwide; Zika is present in the Americas, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands; Yellow fever is in Africa and South America; Chikungunya affects Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Disease symptoms: High fever, severe headache, joint and muscle pain, rash (dengue); Fever, chills, jaundice (yellow fever); Mild fever, rash, conjunctivitis; linked to birth defects like microcephaly (Zika); Fever and severe joint pain (chikungunya)

Aedes albopictus (Asian tiger mosquito)

Pathogens: dengue, Zika and chikungunya viruses

Regions: Native to Asia, Aedes albopictus is now found in tropical and subtropical climates worldwide, where it transmits the dengue and chikungunya viruses in many of the countries it inhabits.

Entomologist Lawrence Reeves collects mosquito samples in a low-lying area south of Gainesville.

”

“ We have DNA sequences for 95% of the mosquitoes that are known in the state. Anytime we find something that looks questionable or new, we sequence the DNA to determine if it’s something known or unknown.

Lawrence Reeves

and environmentally friendly by studying how biodiversity and ecosystems are affected.

Reeves also spends considerable time and energy developing detailed images that help mosquito control officials identify the insects more easily and accurately. In Reeves’ world, distinguishing between mosquito species involves minutiae like the number of hairs on a particular joint. Those small but crucial details helped to prove the Culex lactator had spread far afield to Florida’s west coast, Reeves says.

Reeves inspects a net of mosquito specimens trapped during a collection trip near Gainesville.

In addition to identifying new mosquito species, Reeves has an intense interest in the animals they bite. Some mosquitoes target birds and mammals. Others prefer feeding on the blood of fish and lizards. One type of Florida mosquito takes flight at night, homing in on frogs by tracking their singing sounds. Knowing which animals are targeted by mosquitoes is important because the West Nile, Eastern equine encephalitis and other viruses circulate among wildlife and occasionally spill over to humans, he says.

Reeves’ interest in mosquitoes’ blood feeding habits also led to a groundbreaking discovery in 2018. Reeves, then a graduate student at UF, collected many Uranotaenia sapphirina a common mosquito in the eastern United States and identified DNA from the blood in their guts. But something was amiss in their blood-feeding samples: DNA analyses

Culex quinquefasciatus (southern house mosquito)

Pathogens: West Nile and St. Louis encephalitis (SLEV) viruses

Regions: Culex quinquefasciatus and the closely related Culex pipiens occur in tropical and temperate regions worldwide, where both can transmit West Nile virus. In the U.S., both can transmit St. Louis encephalitis virus.

Disease symptoms: 80% of West Nile cases are asymptomatic, others have fever, headaches and body aches; Most people with SLEV are asymptomatic but severe cases can cause brain inflammation or meningitis.

consistently failed, meaning the insects’ targets remained a mystery. Frustrated in the lab, Reeves took to the field. He spent a night in a swamp along the River Styx near Gainesville, eventually finding the mosquitoes feeding on worms and leeches. The resulting paper was the first known evidence of a mosquito that only feeds on invertebrates’ blood. More broadly, the findings indicated that adult mosquitoes feed on a much wider range of hosts than was previously known.

“By understanding which mosquitoes bite which animals, we can better understand how these pathogens move through the ecosystem,” he says.

Lawrence Reeves

Assistant Professor of Entomology lereeves@ufl.edu

Sadie Ryan

Professor of Medical Geography sjryan@ufl.edu

Daniel Swale

Associate Professor of Insect Toxicology and Physiology dswale@ufl.edu

Anopheles quadrimaculatus (common malaria mosquito)

Pathogens: human malaria parasites

Regions: This mosquito lives throughout eastern North America. Malaria has been eradicated in the U.S. since the 1950s, but remains a severe problem in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia, where it is transmitted by other Anopheles species.

Performance Engineering Peak

By Joseph Kays

IArtificial intelligence meets athletic excellence

magine every member of the Florida Gators football team wearing a wireless sensor during practices and games that uses GPS, accelerometers and other technologies to gather over 1,000 data points per second on location, speed and workload. Now imagine that for the basketball team, the volleyball team, the soccer team and UF’s other intercollegiate sports teams.

“Just one athlete wearing one kind of tracking device can generate a billion data points in a single season,” says Jennifer Nichols, an associate professor of biomedical engineering. “Multiply that by the 500 athletes across all of UF’s intercollegiate sports times multiple seasons and multiple data sources and the numbers get real big real fast.”

“ We have world-class AI and world-class athletics, and we’re trying to bring those together to fulfill research, educational and athletic goals.”

Jennifer Nichols

Historically, strength and conditioning coaches and athletic trainers for each team have gathered, stored and analyzed their parts of that data in their own ways, working to extract insights to help their athletes perform better and stay healthier.

But what if all the information from all of the athletes across all of the sports was in one giant database that representatives from all of the sports could access in easy-to-understand custom dashboards? What if artificial intelligence could spot trends in that data that could show how insights garnered from a track high jumper could be used to help a basketball player jump higher? What if data revealed the different ways in which men and women athletes recover from pulled hamstrings or high ankle sprains? What if data revealed the similarities and differences between how baseball pitchers and football quarterbacks throw a ball and what that means for their arms?

That’s exactly what a collaboration between the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and the University of Florida Athletic Association (UAA) is hoping to achieve through the AI-Powered Athletics initiative, part of a UF & Sport

Collaborative to elevate the university’s already stellar reputation in sports performance, healthcare and communication.

“The UAA collects a large amount of data from student-athletes on health, nutrition and sports performance,” says Daniel Ferris, the Robert W. Adenbaum Professor of Engineering Innovation in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. “Most of that data is under-analyzed and under-utilized. Our proposed treatment of the data could greatly benefit team performance and student-athlete health and well-being.”

One of the first moves made by project leaders Nichols and Spencer Thomas, the UAA's director of sports performance and analytics, was to recruit Celeste Wilkins to help organize, arrange and categorize all the data. Wilkins is a biomechanist

and research scientist who has experience with the NBA's Toronto Raptors and in thoroughbred and show jumping.

"I'm the boots-on-the-ground doer,'' Wilkins says. "The aim of the project is to create a data bank for both research purposes and for the UAA to leverage with advanced analytics. My role is coordinating all the data."

Wilkins says one of the biggest challenges is that “all of these data sources are living in different areas.”

“They could be notes kept on a clipboard, they could be spreadsheets kept on somebody's computer or in a proprietary database,” she says. “We want to centralize all of those data sources into somewhere secure and accessible in order to inform high-quality decision making on the athletic front and on the research front.”

Wilkins says the end product has to be flexible enough to keep up with evolving technology.

“Athletic teams are adding tools to their arsenal every day,” she says, “so we're building this data bank not just for now but for the future, to accommodate sports technology as it emerges.”

Nichols says one benefit of eliminating silos between sports is that it enables the researchers to see similarities and differences among athletes from different disciplines.

"And as you might expect, coaches want different things from the data,” she says. “The musculoskeletal system of a gymnast is going to be different than that of a sprinter. It's going to be different for your center than your point guard."

“The goal of AI-Powered Athletics is to bridge our AI knowledge in the College of Engineering with the expertise of Gator Athletics,” says Nichols. “We have world-class AI and world-class athletics, and we're trying to bring those together to fulfill research, educational and athletic goals.”

Before they started organizing the data, the researchers sat down with 17 UF coaches and trainers from five different teams to ask how they use the data they already have and how they would like to use data in the future. UF engineering doctoral students Mollie Brewer and Kevin Childs recently presented the results of those conversations in a paper at the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery CHI conference in Japan.

Brewer and Childs reported that while teams have “an abundance of data sources” including inertial measurement units, global positioning systems, film analysis, hydration testing, body composition analysis, force plates and velocity-based training systems they use the information selectively.

“Coaches and support staff are not passive consumers of performance data but active decision-makers who integrate quantitative insights with their

coaching experience and understanding of athletes’ needs, performance objectives and team goals,” Brewer and Childs reported.

“Coaching staff manage data at every stage of the process while striving to balance data-driven insights with professional judgment and athlete well-being.”

UF head basketball

Coach Todd Golden was an early adopter of using analytics for everything from in-game decisions to roster construction and recruiting strategy.

“ We’re looking for ways to optimize performance and win championships. How do we utilize this data to enrich our student athletes and to help us perform? ”

Spencer Thomas

So when Victor Lopez, director of strength and conditioning for the Gator men's basketball team, presented him with data and a plan to build players’ stamina going into what the coaches knew was going to be a grueling postseason last spring, he was all in.

In preparation for the post-season tournaments, Lopez reported workload data collected throughout the season to Golden and his staff to help prepare practice plans. The numbers informed Florida's decision to ratchet up the intensity at practices before the SEC and NCAA tournaments “so that our guys didn't feel that workload for the first time. To make sure that we've been there before and we could operate at a high level."

So it was no surprise to Lopez that during the Gators’ run to the NCAA

Men’s Basketball Championship last spring, television analysts commented repeatedly about how fresh Florida’s players looked compared to their opponents.

"It worked out like a charm,'' Lopez says with a smile.

While winning championships is always a goal, Nichols says the team is primarily focused on the student-athletes.

“If we're honest, I'm not actually a sports fan, but I am a fan of student-athletes,” she says with a chuckle. “I really value that our goal is to help the student athlete not only excel as an athlete, but also excel as a student. They've chosen to do two incredibly difficult things at the same time. They've chosen to complete an undergraduate college education and do college athletics and perform on the field to the best of their ability. So, anything

John Jernigan

we can do to help their performance both in the classroom and on the field is really important and really valuable.”

Part of supporting the student athletes is protecting their personal health data, Wilkins says. Apart from the team coaches and staff, all of the information gathered about student athletes will be deidentified to protect their privacy.

“One of the unique aspects of this research project is that we've been able to speak to athletes one-on-one ... and ask them whether they consent to having their data contributed to the data bank, and that's really been eye opening for the athletes,” Wilkins says. “They've had to consider which data are collected and what that might yield. A lot of them are

“Athletic teams are adding tools to their arsenal every day, so we’re building this data bank not just for now but for the future, to accommodate sports technology as it emerges.”

— Celeste Wilkins

quite aware of the data that's collected about them, but now they get to decide whether they contribute their data to cutting-edge research or whether they would prefer to conserve some of the data privately.”

UF’s HiPerGator supercomputer is a powerful tool for crunching all this data, says Thomas. This initiative enables the engineers, strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers and coaches to work together to figure out how to best use that tool.

“We’re looking for ways to optimize performance and win championships. How do we utilize this data to enrich our student athletes and to help us perform?” says Thomas.

Ultimately, the AI-Powered Athletics team hopes to use the vast scientific resources of the University of Florida to give Gator athletes and coaches a competitive advantage, on the field of play and in life.

When it comes to athletics in the future, Wilkins says “there will be some teams that guess and some that know. We want the Gators to know.”

Jennifer Nichols Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering JNichols@bme.ufl.edu

Spencer Thomas Director of Sports Performance and Analytics SpencerT@gators.ufl.edu

Celeste Wilkins

Research Assistant Scientist celeste.wilkins@ufl.edu

John Jernigan

TTeam effort: The UF & Sport Collaborative

he UF & Sport Collaborative is a multi-faceted initiative with five major thrusts.

The collaborative, which has received $2.5 million in strategic funding from the university, is a partnership between the University Athletic Association, the College of Health and Human Performance, the Warrington College of Business, the College of Journalism and Communications, the College of Medicine, and the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. In addition to AI-Powered Athletics, there are four other thrusts: Sport and Health Leaders: A new certificate program through the College of Health and Human Performance is increasing students’ understanding of athletes and the factors that influence their wellbeing. Available courses include Personal and Family Health, Athlete Health and Wellbeing, Athlete Career Management, and Worksite and Health Promotion.

Gator AccelerAItor for Sport Analytics: The College of Health and Human Performance and the Warrington College of Business are working with the UF’s men’s basketball team to improve recruitment, player evaluation, scouting, and game strategy through artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The project is also developing a master’s degree program in AI and Sports Analytics which will provide students with a real-world laboratory for working directly with teams and athletes.

Transforming Sport Science Research for Every Body: The College of Medicine is helping advance the analytic capacity of the UF Health Sports Performance Center, making it a centerpiece of research and testing for able-bodied and para-athletes of all ages and fitness levels. The Center is advancing precision treatment, performance training, and research inclusivity for athletes.

Gator Nation Gameday Live: The College of Journalism and Communications is offering students an opportunity to produce a live, one-hour sports preview show, modeled after ESPN’s “College GameDay” program. Students will gain experience in anchoring, reporting, producing, and directing.

Drug Radar

NDEWS detects the next drug epidemic

By Doug Bennett

In the hunt for fresh clues about emerging illicit drug use and accidental poisonings from drugs, University of Florida epidemiologist Linda Cottler and her team cast a wide net.

Cottler’s group, the UF-based National Drug Early Warning System (NDEWS), combs through emergency medical service data. They use rapid, weekend-long surveys and scour the social media site Reddit to get timely insights about new druguse trends. And they collect troves of information from an array of sources, including federal drug seizures, toxicologists, funeral directors, school superintendents and even curious journalists.

The goal is simple: Collect and analyze divergent data about drug use, harmonize it with other figures and disseminate the information as quickly and widely as possible.

“We want to figure out where the next overdoses are going to occur,” Cottler says.

The NDEWS Coordinating Center occupies a unique position in the world of epidemiology. When UF took over NDEWS in mid-2020, Cottler envisioned a nimble group that could put out crucial information about drug-use trends

in close to real time. She also aspired to substantially build its audience of health departments, emergency medical and other groups and agencies on the front lines of substance use. From a base of zero subscribers, NDEWS has grown its weekly briefing list to over 6,400.

To do that, Cottler assembled a leadership team from three universities. The group includes a drug use epidemiologist; a forensic toxicologist; a Florida Atlantic University associate professor of psychology; and a distinguished psychiatry

professor who specializes in substance abuse. Cottler is a professor in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and the College of Medicine.

NDEWS has deployed a host of innovative drug-surveillance methods in recent years. Its Rapid Street Reporting program sends college students into communities to gather real-time substance use data. The students conduct brief, anonymous interviews with local residents. Since 2021, they have done surveys in 21 cities. The survey covers about 100 drugs and documents their adverse effects on people. It also details the rise of new psychoactive substances.

As NDEWS’ other tools are deployed, a timely picture of current drug use comes into focus. Reddit “scraping” led by Elan Barenholtz, an NDEWS co-investigator and FAU faculty member, helps to detect early signs of new drug trends although it can lack location specifics. Dispatch data from 911 centers are used to generate “heat maps” of overdose activity, including the time and day, helping to target interventions.

Reddit discussions offer snippets of information that have reliably correlated with drug use in communities. When paired with data about fatal drug

Linda Cottler, NDEWS Director

NDEWS Sentinel Network

overdoses and drug seizures, a detailed picture emerges quickly. In one instance, anecdotal reports about pentobarbital a potent sedative emerging in the illicit drug supply were rapidly investigated and turned into a published paper.

“We’re uniquely situated to identify emerging drugs. We want to impact the degree of drug use and mortality by disseminating reliable information,” says Bruce Goldberger, a UF forensic toxicologist and NDEWS co-investigator.

For the NDEWS team, agility matters. Drug use trends can change as quickly as an illicit chemist can alter a molecule. Drug laws, and even medical examiners’ testing, struggle to keep up.

“One molecule can change and it will not be illegal,” Cottler says.

While the chase can be exhausting, NDEWS continues to be successful in its pursuit of emerging drugs. Cottler’s team was among the first to notice an uptick in the use of “pink cocaine,” a misnamed drug cocktail that typically contains the anesthetic ketamine and other drugs. NDEWS is seeing psychedelic mushrooms consistently ranked as the thirdmost used illicit drug in the country.

Fentanyl, a potent pain reliever, is now being laced with an array of non-opioid sedatives and anesthetics, NDEWS has found. Depending on the substance, people who ingest illicit fentanyl have reported numbness, irregular heartbeat and other complications that can land them in the intensive care unit. One of the anesthetics, a veterinary sedative known as medetomidine, has led to an alarming increase in hospital admissions.

“We received a query regarding the appearance of local anesthetics in the illicit fentanyl drug supply. People are complaining that their arm goes numb when they inject fentanyl,” Goldberger says.

Sixteen sentinel sites around the country collect and submit data to NDEWS, giving the group consistent and timely access to local drug use trends. When 911 heat maps indicated a rise in overdoses had landed Chicago in the top 10 nationally, they asked NDEWS for a longer,

more detailed report on drug activity in the area. Similar requests have come in from authorities in Washington state and New York City. That, Cottler says, helps local authorities deploy law enforcement, emergency services and overdose prevention resources.

Just this year, NDEWS’ hotspot alerts have identified an array of druguse trends that otherwise might go undetected on a broader scale. From the Idaho Panhandle to Martin County in southeast Florida, overdoses involving the opioid-like substance kratom were uncovered. Overdoses involving tianeptine, an opioid-like substance nicknamed “gas station heroin,” were spotted in areas as diverse as rural northwestern Michigan and the Denver metro area as well as 23 other counties nationwide.

As a testament to NDEWS’ value and relevance, Cottler notes the group’s weekly reports can change right away depending on what is happening.

“We think every week about what we’re going to publish. And then, all of a sudden, something turns up in South Dakota or Atlanta, and we change our report completely,” she says.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse recently reaffirmed UF’s role as the NDEWS coordinating center.

“This information can help communities know where to distribute resources like the opioid overdose treatment naloxone or target other services or prevention interventions. The recent renewal of a cooperative agreement demonstrates NIDA’s commitment to this program and the importance of continuing to identify new indicators of changing drug-use patterns and disseminate this information to communities who can use it to inform their public health response,” says Wilson Compton, NIDA’s deputy director.

For NDEWS Deputy Director Joseph J. Palamar, current data such as law enforcement drug seizures and poison center reports are paramount. Officially, he’s a professor of population health at

“We’re uniquely situated to identify emerging drugs. We want to impact the degree of drug use and mortality by disseminating reliable information.”

—Bruce Goldberger

New York University Langone Medical Center. Practically, he describes himself as a drug use epidemiologist.

Palamar brings a unique level of lived experience, something he says helps him thrive on the job. He once passed all the screenings to be a New York City police officer but was too young to join the force right away.

“But the next thing I knew, I was a fixture in the New York City after-hours club scene,” Palamar says. “I was surrounded by drugs ecstasy, ketamine, GHB. Later, I was working on club drug research studies at NYU. It’s almost been a quarter-century and I’m still focusing largely on party drugs.”

Palamar, who has helped raise awareness about “pink cocaine,” says fentanyl and other novel opioids should be a major focus due to their high lethality and prevalence in unintentional exposures. One of NDEWS’ strengths is early detection and dissemination of drug trends, he notes. And while Reddit has its limitations for epidemiology, it’s a useful trend-spotting tool. The group has found that chatter

about a drug often increases before poisonings occur. That, he says, can buy valuable time for interventions and awareness.

“It’s an early warning system. We focus on drug trends and novel drug trends in as close to real time as we possibly can,” he says.

In March, their work revealed that non-fatal exposures to fentanyl among children reported to poison centers grew from 69 in 2015 to 893 in 2023 a 1,194% increase. The largest jump was among those aged 13 to 19, affecting 514 teenagers in 2023. The plurality of exposures 3,009 in all resulted in a major, life-threatening effect. The findings were published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. In less than one month, the paper was covered in over 100 news stories, blogs, social media posts and other online sources.

It is among the first analyses examining the prevalence of non-fatal fentanyl exposure among children. The authors say their results show an urgent need for more prevention and harm reduction.

Cottler says that includes safely disposing of used fentanyl patches, controlling kids’ access to medications meant for others and educating them about the drug’s dangers. Parents need to be keenly aware of the symptoms of overdoses in children, the authors noted. Even those who use illegal opioids should be well educated about keeping the drugs away from children, they concluded.

“The paper made a big impact because it’s about kids and the ways they can be harmed unintentionally,” Cottler says.

Next, the NDEWS team is looking to expand the depth and breadth of its work. Cottler says a scholar came from Spain to learn about NDEWS and begin a sentinel network there. Meanwhile, Palamar says NDEWS new networks involving funeral directors, school superintendents and toxicologists will further diversify the team’s stream of insights in near real-time.

Goldberger, the UF forensic toxicologist, notes that NDEWS is the only federally funded, coordinated drug early warning system in the United States. Cottler finds particular joy in mentoring students to conduct primary data collection and contributing to efforts that matter to communities. All of that comes together with NDEWS.

“It is one of the most interesting studies I have ever worked on,” she says.

Linda B. Cottler Professor of Epidemiology lbcottler@ufl.edu

Bruce A. Goldberger Professor of Pathology bruce-goldberger@ufl.edu

By The Numbers 20 16 Community health experts affiliated with NDEWS 15

The UF-based National Drug Early Warning System is the only coordinating center of its kind in the country. Funding comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In addition to drug-use monitoring, it is a site for training the next generation of scientists interested in the epidemiology of drug use.

55

245 Weekly briefings published Scientific advisers working with NDEWS

Nationwide “sentinel sites” for monitoring drug-use trends

Peer-reviewed publications

Size of informal network of toxicologists, medical examiners/coroners, funeral directors, school superintendents, reporters and harm-reduction groups working with NDEWS 2,550

By Doug Bennett

When Chimay Anumba became dean of UF’s College of Design, Construction and Planning in Fall 2016, one need was immediately evident: a new building.

He noticed right away that students had no space for collaborating. Over the years, the situation only got more difficult. Labs that are crucial for design collaborations and student learning got scattered to other buildings due to a lack of space.

Nine years later, DCP is getting new quarters. A 50,000-square-foot, $49 million facility packed with thoughtful design elements and the latest technology is scheduled for a soft opening during homecoming in midOctober. By Spring 2026, the Bruno E. and Maritza F. Ramos Collaboratory will be fully operational giving UF one of its most technologically advanced buildings.

For Anumba, the building’s homecoming debut is particularly symbolic. The college’s wood shop is relocating from the Fine Arts Building. The Fabrication Lab, housed in quarters a half-mile away, will also have a new home. A construction robotics lab is getting a prime, ground-floor spot.

He’s just as enthusiastic about what’s new in the Ramos Collaboratory space. The Jon and Jodi Kurtis Research Hub housing DCP research centers and institutes will allow faculty and graduate students to work together. Stellar Creative Commons, a flexible, multi–function space, will serve as the “living room” of the college and will bring faculty, students, staff and other collaborators together. In the Kornblau Family Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) Lab, students will be using immersive, large-scale visualizations to better model and study building systems.

DCP leaders (left to right) Ravi Srinivasan, Nancy Clark and Chimay Anumba review construction progress on the new Collaboratory.

“The building itself is going to be a living-learning lab,” Anumba says. He’s also proud of what the Ramos Collaboratory is not a traditional academic building. Faculty offices were intentionally left out of the design.

“The intent of the Ramos Collaboratory is that it’s available 100% for every discipline in the college. There’s no sense of proprietary ownership of any space. It’s a highly student-centered building,” he says.

The unified space accomplishes two of the college’s major goals, Anumba says. That includes breaking down its siloed academic units in favor of a more collaborative environment and offering students the latest digital tools for learning and building. The new Dale and Cathy Hedrick 3D Printing Lab will allow larger, multidisciplinary groups of students to work together on digital models and 3D printing. The lab also does significant CNC machining, which uses computer software to control factory equipment.

At last, Anumba says, the college has a facility to match students’ needs and the faculty’s ambitions.

“We knew we needed to teach students in a slightly different way that is more aligned with the current and future needs of the industry and its professions,” he says.

“The building

The building is also the first at UF to have a digital twin a real-time, virtual replica of the building. Using an array of internetconnected sensors, the twin can monitor and optimize heating and air conditioning operations, lighting, room occupancy and energy use. A robotic dog, donated by the industrial technology firm Siemens, will occasionally roam the building to collect pictures, video and data on lighting, air quality and other environmental conditions.

The Ramos Collaboratory’s Siemens Lab for Technology and Innovation will help faculty, students and industry experts work on future building systems and technologies.

“It’s all about developing better energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality sensors that evaluate lighting conditions and occupancy,” says Nancy Clark, a professor and director of the School of Architecture.

The building itself is a classic example of form following function. At one end, the Ramos Collaboratory needed to mesh with the brutalist, concrete-heavy design of the existing Architecture Building that dates back to 1979. At the other end, Anumba and other college leaders wanted

UF’s Architecture Building, now known as Jonathan and Melanie Antevy Hall, opened in 1979.

About the Collaboratory to be a living–

Deploys Digital Twin Technology

Size: 50,000 SQ FT

Cost: $49 million

Uses: Research Hub, Collaborative Spaces

Kornblau Family Virtual Design and Construction Lab to better study building systems.

itself is going learning lab.”

– Chimay Anumba

an exterior that meshed with nearby brick buildings in UF’s historic district. To avoid overloading the new Ramos Collaboratory’s steel frame, the project’s designers hit on a distinctive solution: sheaths of prefabricated brick cladding that resemble traditional bricks but are thinner and lighter. The building’s curved exterior allows for windows that maximize natural light while reducing heat gain.

Inside, open spaces prevail as a way to encourage interaction among students. Massive windows cap the end of the Ramos Collaboratory, giving visitors sweeping views of the Century Tower and nearby historic buildings. A new multipurpose hall will accommodate lecture audiences of up to 200 people.

Harmonizing the new building to its surroundings while making it technologically advanced and welcoming to students was especially important, says Ravi Srinivasan, a professor and the college’s associate dean. In the Kornblau Family VDC Lab, students need larger screens to better interact with building designs and understand how their complex physical systems relate, he says.

The building also bristles with state-of-the-art technology. NVIDIA’s Omniverse computing platform is being used to “visualize” the building’s digital twin. Once the building is complete, the platform will be used to simulate various operating conditions. Omniverse will help by unifying live sensor data and maintenance records in one interactive model, Srinivasan says. It also allows for modeling scenarios to study energy consumption, ventilation performance and lighting while potentially predicting equipment failures. Omniverse may also one day be used as an artificial intelligence training tool, giving students the ability to interface with the platform in order to run specific simulations.

To get there, Anumba led a major fundraising effort spanning more than six years. The college raised $24.1 million and UF secured $25 million in state funds. The project, which also includes infrastructure renovations to the adjacent Jonathan and Melanie Antevy Hall (formerly the Architecture Building), debuts this fall.

Construction work at the Bruno E. and Maritza F. Ramos Collaboratory.

“We are creators. We need to lead by example for the entire campus in terms of structures that complement the surrounding environment. That’s exactly what we did.”

– Ravi Srinivasan

For some former students, the Ramos Collaboratory is a chance to come full circle. Several alumni who once walked the broad, austere corridors of DCP as students are working on the Ramos Collaboratory as architects, designers, and construction project managers.

“As alumni, they have brought a lot of passion to the design,” Anumba says. “They’ve really made this a signature building in terms of aesthetics and functionality so that it will stand the test of time.”

Chimay Anumba Professor and Dean College of Design, Construction and Planning anumba@ufl.edu

Ravi Srinivasan

Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives sravi@ufl.edu

Nancy M. Clark

Professor and Director, School of Architecture nmclark@ufl.edu

DCP Charts Bold Research Agenda

From more resilient infrastructure to affordable housing, the UF College of Design, Construction and Planning has an ambitious research agenda. Here is a look at its core efforts:

Smart Cities:

DCP researchers are studying ways to scale digital twins from individual buildings to citywide applications. To do that, they plan to build digital twin prototypes and test their ability to support decision-making for building operations, energy performance and emergency response. Test sites are expected to include the DCP’s new Ramos Collaboratory, select UF buildings and sites in Jacksonville.

Health & the Built Environment:

DCP researchers investigate how quality-of-life factors such as air quality, walkability and access to green spaces can positively influence well-being.

Resilient Communities & Infrastructure:

DCP researchers bring together experts from DCP and other UF colleges to study the effects of adverse weather on coastal regions. The aim is to find broad-based strategies to address issues including flooding, coastal erosion, aging infrastructure and rapid population growth.

Affordable Housing

DCP researchers are examining the complex factors contributing to housing shortages and cost burdens, and identifying effective strategies and policies that increase access to safe and affordable homes.

‘Circular Economy’ for Sustainable Infrastructure:

By leveraging digital twins and other technologies, DCP researchers reduce waste, enhance the reuse of materials and improve the environmental sustainability of construction and development.

Advanced Construction Robotics:

DCP researchers are working on advanced robotics for industrialized construction, construction safety and project monitoring.

Advanced Design, Engineering, Construction & Preservation:

Current AI design tools for architecture and engineering have limitations. DCP researchers are considering how eye-tracking data and natural language processing can improve those design tools.

Workforce Development:

DCP researchers are exploring new and safer strategies to train and retain skilled workers in planning, building design, construction and facilities management.

UF has received more than $500 million in Gatorade royalties, helping to fund thousands of research projects. Often, faculty are able to leverage Gatorade seed funding into millions more in grants from public and private agencies.

and his research

conduct testing with uf athletes that leads to the creation of gatorade.

dr. robert cade

team

1973

uf enters an agreement with the inventors and stokely-van camp to return licensing royalties to the university to fund research.

2025

1983

quaker oats company purchases stokely-van camp and gatorade.

uf surpasses $500 million in gatorade royalties.

1967

stokely-van camp acquires the rights to produce and sell gatorade throughout the united states.

2001

pepsico purchases stokely-van camp and gatorade.

2007

dr. cade honored with campus historic marker just weeks before his death.

2015

gatorade celebrates 50 years of fueling athletic performance.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Keri Hoadley

UF astronomer Keri Hoadley, who specializes in ultraviolet space instrumentation, is building tools for future space missions, including NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory. The UV Space Lab she leads is outfitted with state-of-the-art tools to design and construct space-bound instruments, positioning UF as a national leader in space technology development. It also integrates with the university’s Astraeus Space Institute, creating a powerful interdisciplinary hub for space exploration.

Nils Averesch

Synthetic biologist Nils Averesch is developing microbial systems to support long-term space missions. Formerly at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Averesch now works at UF’s Space Life Science Lab, engineering microbes to produce food, fuel and medicine from limited resources. His vision treats biology as a toolkit for exploration, creating “living factories” that function in space. Averesch’s work not only advances space sustainability but also offers solutions for Earth’s environmental challenges.

Jason Butler

Jason Butler, a professor of hematology and oncology, leads a UF Health Cancer Center team that discovered how blocking a protein called thrombospondin-1 can reverse aging in blood stem cells. Their research showed that removing this protein in aged mice restored youthful blood function, improved bone and vascular health, and extended lifespan. The study opens doors to therapies that could enhance immune response and chemotherapy outcomes in older adults. With clinical trials ahead, Butler’s work represents a major step in combating age-related decline.

Dengjun Wang

Dengjun Wang, a UF professor in agricultural and biological engineering, is tackling PFAS contamination harmful “forever chemicals” affecting soil and water. His research combines hydrological modeling with machine learning to track PFAS movement and guide cleanup efforts. Focused on protecting rural communities and agriculture, Wang’s systems-level approach examines how PFAS interact with farming practices. His work aims to develop decision tools for land managers and policymakers to reduce exposure while maintaining productivity.

Christian Jobin

Distinguished Professor of Medicine Christian Jobin’s lab has been at the forefront of microbiota research in recent years and has contributed valuable knowledge on how bacteria influence the development of colitis and colitis-associated colorectal cancer. His lab discovered the cancer-promoting effect of colibactin, a metabolite produced by some gut E. coli, and revealed how inflammation impacts DNA damage induced by microbes that can lead to mutations and diseases like cancer. Jobin is also co-leader of the UF Health Cancer Center’s new ImmunoOncology and Microbiome program.

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Research & Impact

For 75 years, America’s great research universities have worked in partnership with the federal government to address the biggest challenges facing our people, like diseases, natural disasters and national defense. Not only has this partnership produced groundbreaking discoveries that have improved countless lives, but it has trained generations of students to carry the work forward, constantly renewing our opportunities for innovation and economic growth.