People Group Archives: Research Areas

Assistant Professor Jennifer Crook is a nationally recognized nutritional epidemiologist and nurse scientist whose work investigates how nutritional insecurity becomes biologically embedded to drive inflammation, symptom burden and cancer disparities. Her research integrates omics‑based biomarkers, nutritional epidemiology and community‑engaged methods to develop clinically actionable tools that advance cancer outcomes. In a previous faculty role at […]

Associate Professor Rui Xie holds appointments in both UCF’s College of Nursing and College of Sciences, and is the principal investigator at the university’s Artificial Intelligence and Statistics for Health and Nursing Research Lab. His research encompasses the domains of statistics, biostatistics, machine learning and public health. His primary focus revolves around advancing statistical sketching and […]

Jennie M. Wagner is a lecturer at UCF’s College of Nursing who previously has led and taught RN to BSN and RN to MSN programs at institutions in North Carolina. She has actively served on several accreditation agencies and currently is an appointed member of the National League for Nursing accreditation review committee and evaluator […]

Hyojung “Kay” Kim, a registered dietician nutritionist, is a lecturer at UCF’s College of Nursing where she teaches nutrition. Her research focuses on nutritional epidemiology with an emphasis on the role of nutritional and dietary factors in chronic disease risk and health outcomes. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, she investigates […]

Ayse Malatyali is a Jonas Scholar with a research priority in cognitive aging. She focuses primarily on risk and protective processes of cognitive decline in the continuum of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among underserved older adults. Her additional areas of research include healthcare utilization and end-of-life care among persons living with dementia and dementia […]

Two-time alumna Amanda “Mandi” Houston is a lecturer and director of the Healthcare Simulation graduate program at the University of Central Florida College of Nursing. A certified healthcare simulation educator, her research interests focus on the intersection of evidence-based practice and nursing education. Houston’s clinical background is in a variety of settings including neuroscience, orthopedics, […]

Vivian Schutz, a clinical associate professor at UCF’s College of Nursing, has more than 21 years of experience in nursing education in Brazil and the United States. Schutz has extensive clinical, administrative and leadership experience in intensive care, emergency nursing and healthcare management. Prior to and during her academic career, she served as a nurse […]

Mona Shattell is the chair of the Department of Nursing Systems, the Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Endowed Chair, and a professor at UCF’s College of Nursing. An internationally recognized mental health and psychiatric nursing expert, Shattell is the editor of the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, and the author of […]

Carmen Giurgescu is a UCF Pegasus Professor, the Chatlos Foundation Endowed Chair and associate dean of research at UCF’s College of Nursing. Giurgescu is a world-renowned maternal health researcher who focuses her efforts on reducing preterm births to improve outcomes for new mothers and their babies. Her pioneering research, which is built upon more than […]

Associate Professor Jean Davis’ passion for community health promotion grew from listening to her aunt and her mother, both nurses, discuss and solve community health challenges when she was a child. Davis channels that passion into implementation science research using coaching, wearable technology and artificial intelligence (AI) for physical activity support, promotion and habit formation […]