Five students from the College of Health Professions and Sciences (CHPS) have been named to the Class of 2026 Order of Pegasus. This award is the highest honor that a UCF Knight can achieve, and reflects exemplary academic achievement, community engagement, leadership, and professionalism.
Fatima Alziyad
Alziyad is 
a senior health sciences major completing the Interfaith Dialogue Undergraduate Certificate. Her undergraduate career reflects excellence in research, leadership, and service. She serves as lab manager in the Behavior with Internal regulation using Theory-based Education Lab, contributing to research on internal regulation and student health while completing her honors undergraduate thesis on the cognitive effects of Ramadan fasting, supported by the Health Sciences HUT Scholarship.
She completed a National Institutes of Health-funded Neurological Surgery Summer Program, a research internship at the Stroke and Applied Neuroscience Center at the University of Washington Medicine, and an internship at Mayo Clinic.
Nyauni Crowelle
She founded Play It Forward, a youth‑sport access initiative that redistributes donated equipment to eliminate financial barriers. As a Congress‑Bundestag Youth Exchange Ambassador, she used sport coaching to support community engagement in Germany. On campus, she advanced inclusion by founding the first-ever Special Olympics Club at UCF. She ultimately aims to pursue advanced study to further her impact in sport governance and community development.
Lindsey Hildebrand
Hildebrand is a Master of Social Work student with a focus in military social work. She holds extensive interdisciplinary research experience across neuroscience, suicide prevention, sleep and circadian science, interpersonal violence, and veteran health through her roles across multiple academic institutions.
In addition to her academic and research activities, Hildebrand serves as a clinical intern at the Campbell University Counseling Center, specializing in crisis intervention, outdoor therapeutic recreation programming, sleep health, and mindfulness-based interventions with the student veteran population. She has contributed to peer-reviewed publications, national conference presentations, and large-scale program evaluations. Her scholarship and professional practice focus on improving mental health care delivery and advancing evidence-informed interventions for high-risk and underserved military populations
Kworweinski Lafontant
Lafontant is a third-year Doctorate of Kinesiology candidate and a McKnight Doctoral Fellow whose research focuses on human health across the lifespan through exercise, nutrition, and bioimpedance-based screening. His community service reflects this mission, addressing food insecurity and homelessness in Orlando.
Since beginning his Ph.D., he has authored more than 19 publications in leading journals, including Sensors, Frontiers in Medicine, Clinical Interventions in Aging, and JMIR Aging. He has delivered more than 30 presentations at national and international conferences. He teaches undergraduate courses and mentors students, guiding multiple first-author publications. He was also recently elected to the American College of Sports Medicine Board of Trustees.
Taiel Lucile
Lucile is a first-generation student double-majoring in communication sciences and disorders and social sciences, with minors in medical sociology, cultural anthropology, and political science.
A McNair Scholar and Honors researcher, Lucile studies how structural inequities shape access to speech-language therapy for low-income Black and Hispanic children. They are a published researcher in Education Sciences and have conducted neuroscience research as an Amgen Scholar at Johns Hopkins. Lucile also serves on the CHPS Advisory Council. Their career agenda is to use research and policy to expand equitable access to disability support.
All five of these CHPS champions will be honored at the Founders’ Day ceremony on April 1.
