Assistant Director of Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship
Cecily is a catalyst for transitioning research ingenuity to business impact at the University of Central Florida (UCF), where she serves as Assistant Director of Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship and serves as the Program Manager for the university’s National Science Foundation (NSF) Accelerating Research Translation (ART) grant. She works at UCF Ventures, which serves researchers who are interested in commercializing university intellectual property. With a Ph.D. in Industrial & Organizational Psychology from UCF, she blends scientific insight with strategic vision to propel cutting-edge research into real-world solutions.
Cecily’s expertise in converting data-driven innovation to applied settings was honed in her 16-year career as a Senior Research Psychologist at the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division in Research Park. She successfully authored and managed multimillion dollar grants. Cecily’s strength was in cultivating a positive work environment and mentoring integrated product team members across labs. Cecily enthusiastically led a portfolio of basic research on cross-cultural competence, team training and science, and human performance that was successfully applied and instituted to support the U.S. Navy, the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. In 2020, Cecily was honored with a Civilian Service Achievement Medal for exceptional work as Principal Investigator on a research effort in emerging and affordable extended-reality technologies for the Chief of Naval Air Training’s undergraduate pilot training program.
Her entrepreneurial roots trace back to her graduate years at UCF when she participated in many of the commercialization support programs from Venture Lab and competitions at the university, including The Joust and MegaWatt Ventures. As a co-founder of Talawah Technologies, Cecily participated as a finalist in Techstars’ Rising Stars bootcamp. This experience fueled a passion for guiding UCF’s innovators a decade later. Today, she empowers UCF’s boldest thinkers—faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students alike—to ignite their ideas, amplify their impact, and shape the future of technology and society.