KUA STEM Team Places Third In National Competition

The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual competition that provides high school students, grades 9-12, the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment.

This year's state challenge was to design a Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) which included one or more fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and to develop a business plan in support of commercial applications based on a specific mission scenario involving search and rescue operations. (Learn more here).

KUA STEM team coach, Dr. Tom Pasquini, said, "Their single airplane solution was so successful because it was able to search the 2 mile radius area very quickly, in about 40 minutes. This helped them achieve a very low objective function value. Their report was also graded very highly..."

The national competition took things to the next level, adding layers of complexity to the challenge. Students optimized their design and a detailed analysis and gave oral presentations.

“This competition required students to draw on a complete range of 21^st century skills,” says Dr. Pasquini, “From problem solving, critical thinking and communication to leadership, teamwork and creativity. These students have challenged themselves on many levels.”

The KUA team made a preliminary presentation to 4 judges on Saturday, April 20, competing against 28-30 teams from across the country and several US territories.  The KUA STEM team was one of three teams invited to progress to the finals where they presented to a panel of 25 industry experts from the public and private sectors. 

"We couldn't be prouder of this talented group of students," said Head of School Mike Schafer. "Congratulations to them all and thanks Dr. Pasquini for his leadership and dedication."

KUA STEM team members include Jon Butler '15, Paul Katzberger '15, Phillip Kessler '15, Annika Kim '13, Roger Liu '15, Diego Rossi '13, and Chandler Song  '14.