UF to honor student who died Sunday

UF is planning a memorial for a student who died over the weekend.

Josh Hildebrandt, a 30-year-old UF undergraduate student, died Sunday in his sleep from an arrhythmia, or an abnormal heart rhythm, said Carl Barfield, his former mentor at Santa Fe College.

Hildebrandt, an anthropology major and entomology and nematology minor, was born with a heart defect and had a heart transplant because of the condition.

He was a research assistant at UF’s Lucky Lab, said Andrea Lucky, a UF assistant research scientist who runs the entomology lab. Hildebrandt studied at Santa Fe before transferring to UF.

Before his death, he had been working on his senior thesis, exploring the interaction between an invasive species of snail with native ant populations, Lucky said.

He was the first in his family to attend college and wanted to apply to graduate school at UF.

Though Hildebrandt had been in and out of the hospital before he died, he would often text Lucky jokes so she wouldn’t worry.

“Even though there were times when he felt really bad, he would always kind of brush it off when he was around other people,” Lucky said.

Jen Day Shaw, the UF Dean of Students, wrote in an email that UF will likely award Hildebrandt a posthumous degree. The memorial service will be held Thursday or Friday in Steinmetz Hall, she said.

“He was an extraordinarily impressive young man,” Barfield said. “He could have done anything he wanted to.”