Across the University of Florida, our 16 colleges, numerous institutes, and health care facilities embrace our shared mission of outreach and service to improve and enrich our community, nation, and the world. UF in the Community spotlights the impact of UF in our region.

Although UF has students and employees throughout the state, North Central Florida is home to much of our faculty and staff and to our 50,000+ students. Like all area residents, we want a vibrant, safe, healthy, and equitable place in which to live and thrive. Here are some of the ways in which we are enhancing our shared community.​

Families are beginning to ask more questions about when COVID-19 vaccines will be offered to children younger than 16, and how safe and effective they will be when available.

In this video interview, Sonja A. Rasmussen, M.D., M.S., an epidemiologist and a professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of pediatrics and the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, discusses current options available for children, a potential timeline for additional vaccines for younger age groups, thoughts on vaccine safety and ways to protect children right now.

We’ve heard a lot about coronaviruses in the past year, after the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic. But coronaviruses are a diverse group of viruses known to infect most mammals, some birds, and even a few amphibians.

Conventional wisdom holds that only a few strains of the Coronaviridae family infect people, but new research may turn this dogma on its head. According to new work by a group of UF and Haitian researchers, coronaviruses may spillover from animals into people more frequently than previously understood.

The good news is that most infections are not serious and rarely lead to person-to-person transmission, says the study’s senior author, UF Emerging Pathogens Institute Director J. Glenn Morris, Jr., M.D., M.P.H. & T.M.

According to UF Health, 12 percent of healthy patients will experience a negative cognitive change following surgery. Most patients will recover within six months to a year, but longer-lasting problems, such as early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, can remain for the rest of the patient’s life.

University of Florida researcher, Dr. Catherine Price, has created a program to reduce that risk for patients.

Researchers at the UF Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS) Research have patented a new way to detect recycled (previously used) and counterfeit electronic parts, especially chips. The technology created by ECE Associate Professor Domenic Forte and ECE Associate Professor Nima Maghari makes supply chains more secure, protects consumer safety and runs at almost zero cost. Compared to current methods of detecting counterfeit hardware (chips, power supplies, electronics components, etc.), the proposed “universal testing technique” can be used on virtually all chips produced by all vendors and can be further improved by applying artificial intelligence algorithms in order to automate detection.

UF scientists have confirmed a clawed frog species in the Tampa area, and they don’t know yet whether it might spread to other areas of Florida.

“The Tropical clawed frog invasion represents yet another disturbance to Florida’s aquatic ecosystems, particularly those in southern Florida, which are already vulnerable due to habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species and disease,” according to Christina Romagosa, a UF/IFAS research associate professor of wildlife ecology and conservation.

The pandemic pushed a lot of things to the forefront, including the importance of supply chain. Supply chain professionals, including the role of the chief supply chain officer, are more visible now.

Beyond the general public beginning to understand what supply chain does, boardrooms recognize how crucial the function is too. There's "more c-suite attention to the role," said Asoo J. Vakharia, director of the Supply Chain Management Center at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business. This happens after a major disruption to the supply chain, like due to a hurricane or earthquake, but the COVID-19 pandemic is different.

UF’s 27th annual Dance Marathon raised more than $2.27 million dollars this year. The total was announced at the main event, held both at the O’Connell Center and virtually April 10 and 11. The 26-hour-and-12-minute event — meant to simulate the 26.2 miles of a marathon — was the culmination of a year-long effort to collect funds for the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.