America’s first astronauts, known as “the Mercury Seven,” will forever be known as the men who began this country’s journey into space. Twenty-five years after beginning their quest, the surviving astronauts from our original space race launched the Astronaut Scholarship to help ensure the U.S. would be the global STEM leader for the next space races.
The Mercury crew would be impressed with what’s happening at SpaceU in 2025: an aerospace medicine program, a space MBA, a HyperSpace Center and three more recipients of the prestigious scholarship they established. This year, the committee chose 74 juniors and seniors from 51 universities, and UCF is one of only three universities with a trio of winners — Keanu Brayman, Kyle Coutray and Sun Latt.
Each student reminds us that you never truly know what fuels a person’s trajectory toward discovery until you reflect on the journey that brought them into orbit. And two of the scholarship awardees are students in the College of Medicine’s Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. Read more here. https://www.ucf.edu/news/meet-ucfs-2025-astronaut-scholars/