Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Symposium
Each year, seniors from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering participate in Senior Design, in which students showcase a variety of senior design projects that they built throughout the semester. The course is split into a Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Course and an Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Course, both of which task students with specific issues they must solve by designing and building a prototype of a product or device that could aid in a variety of different applications.
In the 2024–2025 Aerospace Engineering Senior Design course, there were 17 teams comprised of 110 students. Seven of those teams were assigned space-related projects: four teams developed Mars Rover concepts for the RASC-AL Competition, two teams designed CubeSat missions for the UNP Mission Concept, and one team built a solid-fueled rocket to compete in NASA’s Student Launch. Six teams developed fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), five of which were entered into NASA’s Gateways to Blue Skies competition and the AIAA Design-Build-Fly (DBF) challenge. Four teams constructed multi-rotor UAVs, including two for the Blue Skies competition, one for the Vertical Flight Society’s DBVF challenge, and one under the Liquid Rocketry Lab’s Advanced Projects initiative.
As in years past, Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Instructor Dr. Felix Ewere presented three Outstanding Project Manager Awards in recognition of team leads who went above and beyond in leading their teams through complex design and prototyping efforts. This year’s honorees were Galen Day of the fixed-wing section, Luke Nicol of the multi-rotor section, and Carson Drummond and Katelyn Yount of the space section.
One standout achievement this year came from Team ULFR (Unmanned Laser Farming and Reconnaissance Vehicle), which won the fixed-wing category. The team was led by Hannah Nguyen, marking the first time in the program’s history that a female project manager led the overall winning team in the fixed-wing category. In the multi-rotor category, Team VFS DBVF, competing in the Vertical Flight Society’s Design Build Vertical Flight challenge, took top honors. In the space section, the winning team was Team CLEOSATRA (Computational Low Earth Orbit SATellite for Reliable Accessibility), which designed a mission to enhance satellite-based accessibility in low Earth orbit.
These three teams were selected by a panel of judges as the top performers of their respective categories during the annual Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Symposium, held on Monday, April 8. To earn their distinctions, teams delivered formal 15-minute presentations in the morning and participated in interactive poster sessions in the afternoon, where friends, family, faculty, and industry partners gathered to see the culmination of their efforts.
Join us at our next Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Symposium
Coming Spring 2026
Aerospace Engineering Senior Design Posters