From left to right: Leanne Wong, Austin Lee, Joshua Thomas, Julianne Owen and Rida Rizvi pose on the stage of the University Auditorium. (Photo by Brianne Lehan)

The Spring 2025 commencement season marked a huge milestone for the University of Florida. The Gator Nation® has grown into a dynamic network of alumni — now half-a-million strong — that spans every Florida county, the nation and the globe. These 500,000 alumni are keen to connect, uplift and pave an Orange and Blue trail for themselves and future Gators.

To commemorate the exceptional class of 2025 and this historic alumni landmark, we selected five students who illustrate many of the best traits of what it means to be a Gator.

The pillars these students exemplify were based on the four figures found on the hammer-beam ends along the interior of UF’s historic University Auditorium. Each showcases a symbol of the university’s student population during the building’s construction in the 1920s: scholar, musician, engineer and athlete.

A century later, we modified these archetypes to reflect the pioneering nature of our modern alumni. Gators are:

Here are the stories of these accomplished and outstanding Gator grads — the newest members of UF’s 500K alumni community.

 

SCHOLAR

 

Rida Rizvi, 29

Major: Master’s, Molecular Cell Biology
Hometown: Karachi, Pakistan

 

Syeda “Rida” Rizvi was about to step out for a breather after a long day of presenting when the winners for the 2025 UF Health Cancer Center Research Showcase were announced.

 

She suddenly heard her name called out in a pronunciation so perfect that she couldn’t miss it.

 

On Feb. 12, Rizvi was one of five winners out of 190 chosen for the best poster award.

 

“I was very pleasantly surprised, but happy, and felt like my hard work was acknowledged,” she said.

 

As she walked up to the stage to accept the award, the principal investigator of her lab, Maria Zajac-Kaye, Ph.D., had a huge smile as she recorded Rizvi with her cell phone, which Rizvi thought was very sweet of her and a testament to the positive dynamic of her lab.

 

Rizvi is a Fulbright Scholar from Karachi, Pakistan. Fulbright is the U.S. flagship program of highly competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists. Rizvi said she only put down subject preferences, not locations, to determine her host institution.

 

She chose UF after interviewing with Vinod Vijayakurup, Ph.D., who would be her future supervisor, for a role in Zajac-Kaye’s lab. She thought their mission aligned with her interest in cancer biology.

 

Rizvi’s research in the lab focused on better understanding pancreatic cancer and identifying newer treatment strategies.

 

Pancreatic cancer is particularly aggressive and rampant across the U.S. It can be hard to diagnose due to its common symptoms, she said.

 

Her entire two years at UF were focused on that research, consuming her days from the moment she woke to when she went to sleep. The poster she presented at the showcase was based on this research.

 

Everyone from the lab stopped by to see her presentation, including her colleague Maria Guijarro, Ph.D., who predicted her win. It was the only “I told you so” in her life that didn’t sting. These were the connections that made Rizvi’s UF experience so worthwhile.

 

“It really matters the lab that you’re in, the people who surround you,” she said. 

 

“You could be in the best university, but if you’re not among the right people, then it can be very traumatic, especially in research, because there’s so much going on. You need support. You need advice. So you have to have the right people. And I think I was very, very, very fortunate to have found that in my lab.”

 

As Rizvi prepares to head back to Pakistan this summer to pursue her Ph.D., she said she was grateful to experience “the true essence of American culture” by meeting so many people at UF from different backgrounds and learning “street smarts.”

 

“I’m going to miss every single inch of the good, the bad,” she said. “I am going to miss every single thing.”

 

To read more and learn about the Alumni, click here