Four Florida State University students have been selected for the 2026-2027 Fulbright U.S. Student Program. These accomplished students will travel to New Zealand, Spain, Thailand and the United Kingdom to teach, study and engage in cultural exchange as part of the U.S. Department of State’s flagship international educational exchange program.  

“The Fulbright Program strengthens connections between Florida State University and the wider world,” said Keith McCall, assistant director of the Office of Graduate Fellowships and Awards. “Through research, teaching and cultural exchange, FSU’s Fulbright recipients advance knowledge, address global challenges and foster mutual understanding. We are always eager to support students as they pursue opportunities to learn, collaborate and make an impact across borders.” 

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s premier international exchange initiative, fostering mutual understanding between U.S. citizens and people around the world. Funded primarily through an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress to the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the program also benefits from support provided by partner governments, host institutions and private organizations across the globe. 

Fulbright U.S. Student Program recipients are selected each year for their academic or professional excellence and leadership potential. With opportunities in more than 160 countries, the program empowers students and recent graduates to teach, study or conduct research while serving as cultural ambassadors for the United States. 

The 2026-2027 Fulbright U.S. Student Program recipients from FSU are Josephine Whelan, Imani Sameem, Laurel Field and Harrison Betz. 

“Whether in the field or in the classroom, the FSU community continues to shine abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program,” said Bonnie Garcia-Gloeckner, associate director of the Office of National Fellowships. “This coming year will be impactful for Josephine, Imani, Laurel and Harrison, as well as the communities in which they will be working. We look forward to hearing about their experiences.”

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The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command and Florida State University are partnering to strengthen STEM education and research and build a robust pipeline of future scientists and engineers for the nation.

The two organizations have formalized their collaboration through an Educational Partnership Agreement, which establishes a framework for DEVCOM and FSU to engage on educational outreach initiatives.

The DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory, the U.S. Army’s sole fundamental research organization, will execute the agreement.

Through this partnership, FSU students and faculty will have opportunities to tap into the expertise of DEVCOM ARL scientists, gaining exposure to a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines that support the Army’s mission while enhancing their education.

“We cannot predict exactly what the battlefield of the future will look like, but we do know that the nation with the sharpest scientific minds will have the decisive advantage,” said Brig. Gen. Robert Born, DEVCOM Commanding General.

“This partnership with Florida State University is about staying ahead. We are giving these brilliant students the chance to work on real-world national security challenges today, so they can lead the discoveries of tomorrow,” he said.

The agreement will allow FSU students and faculty with unique opportunities to engage in hands-on, real-world research alongside Army scientists; access to state-of-the-art laboratory equipment; and mentorship on career growth and pathways in Army science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Initial efforts will include lectures, seminars and colloquia, as well as immersive research experiences in nuclear physics. These initiatives will leverage FSU’s John D. Fox Superconducting Linear Accelerator Laboratory.

Army researchers will assist in guiding and mentoring FSU students’ research experiences, aiming to advance scientific knowledge relevant to national security and the U.S. defense industrial base.

“This partnership represents an exciting opportunity for FSU to advance STEM education and research,” said FSU Vice President for Research Stacey S. Patterson. “By joining forces, we are not only enhancing learning experiences for our students but also helping to build a strong pipeline of talented scientists and engineers who will drive innovation and serve our nation’s needs in the years ahead.”

ARL scientists will work side by side with FSU faculty and students to design, conduct and analyze experiments, ensuring that educational outreach outcomes address both academic and Army priorities.

The partnership will also enable Army scientists to mentor and co-advise FSU graduate students, offering guidance on dissertation and thesis research in real-world laboratory settings.

Additionally, the agreement encourages the development of new STEM courses, seminars and experiential learning opportunities for students at all levels, broadening access to hands-on learning and technical expertise.

“What makes this collaboration unique is that it brings real-world defense challenges directly to FSU,” explained Dr. Eric Moore, DEVCOM deputy to the commanding general. “Having DEVCOM scientists work side-by-side with students in their own university labs bridges the gap between academic theory and national security application. Whether these students ultimately join us as civil servants or innovate in the private sector, they will already have the mission-focused mindset our nation needs.”

About DEVCOM ARL

DEVCOM ARL is the Army’s sole fundamental research laboratory serving as the nexus of science between the military, academia and industry. Operating under U.S. Army Futures and Concepts Command and the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command, ARL executes globally recognized research to accelerate delivery of war-winning, disruptive technologies for tomorrow’s Army.

For information, visit the Army Research Laboratory website.

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Florida State University has been named one of the top 100 universities in the nation for securing U.S. utility patents, according to the latest rankings released by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Coming in at No. 60 on the list, FSU continues to solidify its reputation as a powerhouse of research and commercialization, successfully translating academic discovery into real-world solutions. The rankings reflect the 2025 calendar year.

The Top 100 U.S. Universities ranking celebrates academic institutions that play a pivotal role in advancing national competitiveness. By securing intellectual property through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, FSU enables the transition of faculty-led inventions from the lab to the marketplace, driving both economic growth and societal impact.

“This ranking is more than just a number; it represents the relentless ingenuity of our faculty and their commitment to solving the most pressing challenges of our time,” said Vice President for Research Stacey S. Patterson. “A patent is often the bridge between an idea or breakthrough and a commercial product or service that improves lives, creates jobs, and drives our economy forward. This achievement is a credit to our world-class researchers and a signal to our partners that FSU is a premier destination for high-impact discovery and innovation.”

FSU’s climb in the rankings is driven by a diverse portfolio of breakthroughs across engineering, medicine, and materials science. This year’s ranking reflects the university’s commitment to high-impact research and includes a wide range of patents, including:

• A neutron detector developed by Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Zhibin Yu
• A water-air drone hybrid by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Christian Hubicki

• An antifibrotic drug by Professor of Medicine Branko Stefanovic

• A photo-plastic that can move in different ways with different wavelengths by Professor of Chemistry Ken Hanson

“What makes Florida State’s patent portfolio truly remarkable is its incredible diversity,” said Associate Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Innovation Valerie McDevitt. “Our ranking isn’t just a win for one department. It’s a reflection of a campus-wide culture of discovery. From groundbreaking advancements in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to innovative tools in education and the health sciences, we are proving that FSU’s expertise spans the entire spectrum of human inquiry.”

The NAI has published a worldwide ranking since 2013 but introduced the focused U.S. Universities list in 2023 to better highlight the specific contributions of the American academic landscape. Collectively, the universities on the 2025 Top 100 U.S. list secured over 6,700 patents during the previous calendar year.

This recognition follows a banner year for FSU’s research enterprise, which recently surpassed $488 million in annual research expenditures. The university was also ranked the No. 1 university in Florida for innovation and economic impact in TIME’S inaugural World’s Top Universities 2026 rankings.

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Florida State University researcher Paul Bupe is developing an interactive intersection safety system, a project for which he must analyze thousands of satellite images, fisheye camera photos and maps — more than 1.7 million unique objects each with its own metadata. 

To handle all that data, he uses Amazon Web Services, or AWS. 

Bupe earned seed funding for AWS through an internal FSU program last year and accessed the tools through a partnership with FSU Information Technology Services. 

 On Tuesday, he shared his experiences at the FSU-AWS Researcher Showcase and Awards, a celebration of research excellence and an opportunity for the FSU community to learn more about the high-powered research tools available through the partnership. 

 “Without AWS, we wouldn’t have been able to make this research happen,” said Bupe, who works with FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Associate Professor Moses Olugbenga on PREDISS, a Predictive Intersection Safety System project. 

Bupe and Olugbenga used Amazon’s cloud computing tools for data storage, object detection, autolabeling and other tasks. Their goal is to improve safety at intersections by predicting collisions between vehicles and pedestrians with enough time to allow for interventions to stop a crash. 

Through the partnership, they were able to access more computing power on their schedule to train their own models to handle millions of objects. 

“In AI and machine learning, data is the most valuable thing,” Bupe said. “This gave us the capabilities that truly allowed for innovation.” 

Other researchers from the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the Department of Computer Science who have used AWS in their work shared their experiences with fellow researchers at the event. 

“Our goal as a technology provider and an industry partner is to help accelerate researchers’ work at a low cost,” said AWS Senior Leader Michael Curry. “As one of our presenters said, ‘I don’t need this to be a six-month project. I want it to be a six-day or six-week project.’ They’re trying to accelerate that time to science, and that is what this technology is helping to accomplish.” 

Setting the stage for innovation

The showcase opened with remarks from FSU leadership, emphasizing the growing role of cloud computing in accelerating research and the university’s commitment to expanding access to advanced computational resources.  

“This partnership is a powerful example of how Florida State is delivering on the strategic vision of President McCullough by investing in the technology infrastructure that drives cutting-edge research,” said Associate Vice President & Chief Information Officer Jonathan A. Fozard. “Removing traditional compute barriers and broadening access to secure cloud and AI tools allows our researchers and scholars to move faster, design transformative research and secure the large-scale grants that empower long-term impact.” 

The FSU Office of Research and FSU Information Technology Services recognized 11 researchers from across campus as 2026 FSU/AWS Research Acceleration Fund Awardees for their exceptional creativity, impact and technical excellence in leveraging AWS cloud computing to advance scientific discovery. Winners came from departments across campus: social work; computer science; educational psychology and learning systems; geography; urban and regional planning; scientific computing; health, nutrition and food science; civil and environmental engineering; and communication science and disorders. Each received up to $20,000 in AWS credits. 

“Modern research is increasingly data-intensive. Whether we are talking about quantum materials, generative AI or predictive safety systems, the lab is no longer just a physical space — it is a digital one,” said Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson. 

Cloud computing tools help researchers turn those piles of information into impactful discoveries. 

“This partnership demonstrates the art of the possible,” Patterson said. “Our goal is simple but ambitious: we want to provide FSU researchers with a world-class environment that accelerates discovery.”

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Florida State University students looked to the future during a Discovery Days panel on opportunities in STEM, when a lineup of FSU research and academic leaders came together to inspire attendees to see how their education can translate into a wide range of career opportunities. 

The event, “Unlock Your Future: Career Paths for STEM Graduates,” offered students a chance to hear directly how STEM degrees can be applied in evolving fields beyond traditional academic paths. 

“Your time at Florida State University is profoundly impactful in shaping who you are as a person. Your academic life is just one part of the college experience — what truly defines this time are the relationships you build, the challenges you embrace and the moments that help you grow beyond the classroom as you become the person you’re meant to be.“

— Stacey Patterson, Vice President for Research

“Your time at Florida State University is profoundly impactful in shaping who you are as a person,” said Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson. “Your academic life is just one part of the college experience — what truly defines this time are the relationships you build, the challenges you embrace and the moments that help you grow beyond the classroom as you become the person you’re meant to be.” 

During the discussion, panelists offered insights and guidance through a lineup of experts who shared their professional journeys in fields such as medicine, laboratory science, university administration and corporate leadership. 

The panel featured FSU Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson, College of Medicine Dean Alma Littles, MagLab Director Kathleen Amm, Director of Laboratory Animal Resources William Hill, Associate Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Innovation Valerie McDevitt, FAMU-FSU College of Engineering Professor David Larbalestier and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Associate Program Director and Core Faculty for the Family Medicine Residency Matthew Standridge. 

Attendees were encouraged to think beyond traditional roles and consider how their STEM degrees could open doors in unexpected places. 

“There are so many opportunities out there, and people don’t need to be afraid of exploring them and that’s what makes it exciting,” Amm said.  “Even if you choose one path, you can always pivot later. The world is open to you, especially early in your career.” 

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Florida State University celebrated the grand opening of IGNITE Tallahassee during the third annual FSU Discovery Days, unveiling a new resource designed to serve as a launchpad for entrepreneurship, research and technology development in the Capital City. 

This milestone marks a significant investment in Florida’s innovation infrastructure, offering researchers and startup businesses access to shared laboratories, private offices and collaborative environments that support early-stage ventures and cross-sector partnerships.  

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Three Florida State University faculty from across campus came together to discuss the wide-ranging topic of ethics in a Friday, Feb. 7 symposium at FSU’s Claude Pepper Center.

The symposium was part of the FSU Office of Research’s larger Festival of the Creative Arts, a campuswide collaborative event highlighting the diverse voice, talents and creativity of FSU faculty and students throughout January and February.

The discussion focused on three larger topics as they relate to ethics: Agatha Christie and ethical ambiguity, ethics and research in musicology and ethical challenges posed by national defense and international scientific research.

Michelle Kazmer, dean and professor at the College of Communication and Information, kicked the symposium off with her discussion of ethical ambiguity in the works of Agatha Christie. Christie is an English author best known for her detective novels, plays and short stories.

“Crime fiction has, for millennia, helped us grapple with what it means to be human: how do we collectively respond when people break our shared ethical obligations in the most egregious ways possible?” Kazmer said. “Agatha Christie explored many ethical issues with nuance and breadth across her half-century writing career, offering thoughtful explorations into thorny issues of ethics, obligation and justice.”

Throughout the discussion, Kazmer addressed the primary ethical themes that Christie grappled with in her works and how she used characters, setting, social norms and plot as an avenue for readers to explore those themes.

Curtis Mayes Orpheus Professor in the College of Music Frank Gunderson highlighted ethical considerations in ethnomusicology and musicology, underlining how these considerations are crucial for fostering responsible and respectful scholarship.

“Ethical music research is not a static set of guidelines to be checked off in a proposal; it is an evolving practice of accountability, dialogue and mutual respect,” Gunderson said. “It’s asking, ‘What do I owe the people who trust me with their stories?’”

Gunderson’s discussion highlighted what he argues should serve as guiding pillars in this process: informed consent, power and representation, ownership, collaboration and accountability. He advocates for continuous reflection and adaptation of ethical practices to address the evolving challenges of ethnomusicology and musicology.

Closing out the symposium was Gregory S. Boebinger, professor of physics and director emeritus of FSU’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Boebinger explored the ethical challenges posed by national defense and international scientific research.

“Basic research, by its very nature, is collaborative and cooperative,” Boebinger said. “More applied research, particularly in areas involving national security, introduces additional ethical complexity. This is well illustrated in the film ‘Oppenheimer’, in which a number of ethical considerations are raised by the main characters as they consider their role in the Manhattan Project, the international collaboration that resulted in the first atomic bomb.”

Joined by three FSU honors students, Boebinger also discussed the ethical implications of AI as a modern and timely example of this ethical dilemma and posed questions about the fundamentally cooperative and collaborative research for the benefit of the masses.

Festival of the Creative Arts continues through Sunday, Feb. 23, bringing together departments from across campus to celebrate the innovation that results from combining various modes of expression and subjects together.

For more information and the full program of events, visit research.fsu.edu/fca.

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The Learning Systems Institute (LSI) at Florida State University has received its first-ever grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund a project that aims to build evidence on the impact of pre-service teacher training on foundational learning in Zambia.

Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski, associate director for Research at LSI and a professor of International and Multicultural Education at the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, will serve as the principal investigator on the project.

“I’m excited to have the opportunity to continue working on pre-service teacher education in Zambia and grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for recognizing the importance of supporting evidence generation in this area,” Zuilkowski said. “Rigorous empirical evidence on pre-service teacher education will support decision-making by government policymakers, funders, teacher training institutions and other education stakeholders.”

The study will examine the knowledge and pedagogy of student teachers who have completed their pre-service teacher training in public colleges of education supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Transforming Teacher Education Activity, implemented by LSI in conjunction with School-to-School International and the University of Zambia. Data will also be collected on primary grade reading performance of children in the student teachers’ classrooms.

The grant has the potential to contribute to the sector’s understanding of the role of pre-service teacher training on teacher classroom practices and student learning outcomes. Little empirical research has been conducted on pre-service teacher education outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, and this research offers the opportunity to shed light on Zambia’s teacher training program and generate lessons for the wider sector.

For 55 years, LSI has delivered systems that measurably improve the learning and performance of organizations and individuals in Florida and globally. The institute’s advanced research provides state-of-the-art methods and a clear path for implementation. To learn more about LSI, visit lsi.fsu.edu.

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A Florida State University faculty member has earned funding from the National Science Foundation to travel to South America and investigate the ways languages influence one another after their speakers first interact.

Associate professor of linguistics and Spanish Antje Muntendam received a three-year, $326,292 grant for her project, “Linguistic outcomes of language contact: The production and perception of intonation.” This research explores the impacts of the Spanish language on Quechua, an Indigenous and endangered language that originated in Peru and is still spoken there. Quechua is also spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador.

“This grant is one of the most prestigious in my field, recognizing the value and impact of my research, and it will significantly enhance my body of work,” said Muntendam. “It also acknowledges the importance of studying Indigenous languages and involving underrepresented communities in linguistic research.”

Muntendam also serves as an affiliate faculty member of FSU’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Center (NAIS), which launched last year and unites research from academics across diverse disciplines within the university including art, art history, music, modern languages and linguistics, religion, history, archaeology, geography and anthropology.

For the project, Muntendam will examine the production and perception of questions in both Quechua and Spanish and explore how the languages’ different intonation strategies interact in the spoken language of bilingual people. Intonation — the melody of a sentence that corresponds to changes in pitch, such as high or low tones, that may cause changes in meaning — is a key, yet relatively understudied, aspect of linguistics.

“Dr. Muntendam’s award represents a special moment for a humanities department like ours,” said Reinier Leushuis, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. “NSF classifies linguistics as a STEM field, which exemplifies the rich potential of interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of humanities and science research.”

In Muntendam’s research, Quechua and Spanish were specifically chosen for their significant differences and the long-term, intensive contact between the speakers of both languages. Once widely spoken, Quechua originated more than 5,000 years ago and became the Inca Empire’s official language in the 1400s. The arrival of Spanish conquistadors soon after drove a significant increase in bilingualism. Today, this bilingualism persists, though Quechua itself is endangered — at risk of disappearing entirely. Muntendam’s research identifies the effects of both linguistic factors and social factors on whether a language adapts, survives or disappears.

“This research aims to preserve cultural knowledge and identity, which are intrinsically linked to language,” Muntendam said. “When speakers lose a language, they lose a vital part of their cultural heritage. Incorporating experimental methods into Indigenous language studies allows this research to not only broaden the scope of linguistic inquiry but also highlight the importance of conducting rigorous, data-driven studies within Indigenous communities.”

During two- to three-week research trips in Peru and Argentina, Muntendam will collect data and carry out broader activities with the Quechua-speaking community by training local research assistants and conducting lectures and workshops at local universities and institutes including the National University of Santiago del Estero in Argentina. The grant also enables her to hire a postdoctoral researcher who will travel for nearly four months collecting data in addition to recruiting undergraduate research assistants in Tallahassee through the Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP).

For her research, Muntendam will employ a combination of linguistic and psycholinguistic experimental methods such as proficiency tests and eye-tracking, which continuously measures how people process spoken language, in addition to elicitation tasks, which require a subject to speak. In Quechua, questions are marked with a grammatical particle, or a non-inflected sentence component. Further, questions and statements are not distinguished through intonation, unlike in Spanish.

“The insights of community members are invaluable and will greatly enhance the quality and depth of our research,” Muntendam said. “These collaborations accelerate the research and make it more comprehensive than if done without the community’s input. Additionally, this project will produce valuable resources for both academic research and language documentation and education, benefiting scholars and the communities involved.”

In addition to her role as an associate professor and with NAIS, Muntendam is the coordinator and advisor of the Linguistics Program at FSU and an affiliated member of the Heritage Linguistics Lab at Leiden University.

To learn more about Muntendam’s work and the FSU’s Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, visit modlang.fsu.edu.

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Florida State University celebrated graduates from around the world at the International Student Graduation Reception on Wednesday, April 12.

Hosted by the Center for Global Engagement, the event honored all international students completing their degree and exchange programs in either the Spring, Summer or Fall 2023 semester.

Vice President for Research Stacey Patterson delivered a congratulatory address highlighting the important role of international students and the achievements that are possible through international collaboration. She also recognized international students for their research and the valuable contributions they make to FSU.

“I am always awed by the commitment our international students make to come study or work at an institution that is so far from the people, customs and language that they grew up with,” she said.

Patterson went on to explain how nervous she was when she moved six hours away from home to go to college.

“For many of you, your decision to come to FSU meant you were traveling a far longer distance,” Patterson said. “And yet you flourished and made lasting contributions to the university.”

Of the 1,750 international students currently enrolled at FSU’s main campus, 245 will graduate this spring.

Jorge Galeano-Cabral is an international doctoral student from Paraguay graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering this fall. While at FSU, Galeano-Cabral served as president of the Hispanic Graduate Student Association (HiGSA) and as the International Graduate Student Advocate within the Congress of Graduate Students. He also worked at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory as a research assistant where he had the chance to explore different research areas.

“FSU has not only trained me to become an excellent researcher but has also given me the necessary tools and connections to do so,” he said. “One of the things I love about FSU is that there is a place and community for even the most diverse students.”

Galeano-Cabral recently earned the Global Citizenship Award, which honors outstanding students who have actively engaged in intercultural initiatives on campus or abroad and have exemplified leadership qualities in promoting and supporting a global community among FSU students.

“My advice to new incoming international students is to find your community and research some of the international activities and student organizations across campus,” he said.

Last fall, 144 international students graduated, and 94 international students graduated in Summer 2022. International students come to FSU from around the world, but the most-represented countries currently are China (347 students), India (322 students), Panama (120 students), South Korea (199 students) and Nigeria (67 students).

For more information about international students at FSU, visit cge.fsu.edu/international-students.

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