When I attended a mass meeting for the Solar Car team in Fall 2004, I had no idea how rapidly and completely I’d be drawn in. I was aware of the team, having seen 2001′s M-Pulse on display on a previous visit to Michigan. But I was totally unprepared for the way the Team would come to totally define my college experience and leave a lasting mark on my life. I wasn’t even sure I could be useful – sure, I had a real interest in aerodynamics, but what did I know about designing and building a solar car?

That changed pretty quickly – under the excellent tutelage of Chris “Skip” Vermillion, I rapidly got involved in the Momentum team’s Aerodynamics Division. While most of the design effort was complete, very little of Momentum actually existed. Chris stepped down from his role as Aero Director in December ’04 to focus on his PhD studies, and I was named his successor. Suddenly I – 17 years old and 6 months removed from Petoskey High School – was expected to manage student volunteers, organize work sessions, and turn a roll of carbon fiber fabric into the chassis for a $2 million solar powered supercar. It was a bit of a paradigm shift.

While I didn’t join the ’05 race crew, watching that team win NASC was intoxicating, an extremely proud moment. I helped build that. It’s perhaps the truest motivation for an engineer, watching your creation succeed beyond expectation. Seeing that success made me even more excited to start the ’07 project, this time from square one.

The 2007 project marked a new direction for Michigan Solar Car. We were a young team, with most of the core and all of the leadership of the Momentum project graduating or otherwise moving on. We had a new focus and goal: winning the World Solar Challenge. With that came greater pressure to be even better than the great team that preceded us. I was selected to be the new Engineering Director, a role beyond what I’d ever envisioned for myself, and given a whole new set of responsibilities and challenges. We’d definitely have to learn as we went.

A major “course adjustment” to our new direction came with the release of the aptly named “Challenge Class” regulations for the World Solar Challenge… in June of 2006, only 16 months before the race! It was indescribably deflating to throw out an aerodynamic design we’d poured hundreds of hours into and finally perfected. But to the great credit of the whole team, we quickly rejected the easy way out and didn’t abandon our goal to Win the World. We identified a plan and moved forward. We even gave ourselves a new challenge – the wildly ambitious but innovative and potentially world-beating concentrator system.

It was rarely pretty – I know there are many, many things I could have done better – but through skill, creativity, and often brute force of will, we got that car built with just enough time to spare for a shakedown cruise in Michigan and a dust-devil plagued mock race in Australia. We were tired, edgy, and accosted by sand flies, but when the green flag came out for WSC 2007, we were confident that we could win it all.

Well you know how that went. As Head Strategist, my seat was just behind the driver in Chase. After a chaotic start for the support vehicles, we were finally settling into race mode when I watched Continuum slam into the back of lead and then drift slowly across two lanes of traffic before coming to rest against the far curb. There are certain “where were you when…” moments seared into everyone’s memory. Needless to say, that one’s pretty high on the list in my brain.

If there were any moments of despair, if anyone had any thoughts of giving up on the race, they didn’t last more than a few minutes. The goal we had fought for for two years was out the window, but very quickly, it was “how do we fix this?”  We became closer as a team than I had ever thought possible, bonded together by adversity.  Continuum was fixed in a day, made even stronger than before. We cruised out of Darwin, hell-bent on making Michigan proud.

 

 

My favorite memory of solar car came a few days after the crash after we crossed into South Australia. The skies were sunny, the car was performing beautifully, and the concentrators were finally showing their true capability. We flew through Coober Pedy and Glendambo, even completing a tire swap in about 7 minutes. We passed the Solar World team (overhearing them saying “[expletive]! Here comes Michigan!” over CB, in German of course). As the day was winding down, we began to think we could make Port Augusta, the final control stop on the race. The models said we’d just make it. The strategists in Chase – Jeff Ferman, Evan Quisenberry, and myself, had a brief debate and decided to go for it.

For a couple hours we watched the batteries slowly expend themselves. The whole time we were poised to dial back the speed to avoid killing the batteries, but Continuum just kept going. Entering Port Augusta, our batteries were almost flat, it was nearing 5:00, and a string of stoplights stood between us and the control stop on the far end of town. I think that was as nervous as I got on the whole race. Even our observer (a race official in Chase) was noticeably excited. Finally we made the turn into the stop at 5:09 PM (one minute before the end of the race day – any longer and we’d take a penalty). The telemetry said we had -10 watt-hours in the batteries (thankfully the models were a bit conservative). We’d hit it right on the nose, after over 700km of travel for the day. I don’t think I was ever more proud and excited during the race – certainly it was the best performance Continuum and our team put together in WSC.

 

 

Watching the Quantum team, I’m once again filled with pride. Their innovation, creativity, and dedication have taken Michigan Solar Car to a whole new level. While Continuum needed an ace up her sleeve (the concentrators) to compete against the best in the world, the Quantum team started from a clean slate, shook up all of our methods, worked tirelessly to get the very best of everything, and put themselves on equal terms with the world’s elite. But more importantly, they’ve left behind an excellent legacy and foundation for the teams that will follow.

The great Michigan football coach Fielding H. Yost said, “[L]et me reiterate the Spirit of Michigan. It is based on a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways. An enthusiasm that makes it second nature for Michigan Men to spread the gospel of their university to the world’s distant outposts. And a conviction that nowhere, is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.” The Michigan Men and Women of the Quantum team certainly live up to that Spirit, carrying the Block M, the Winged Helmet, and Michigan pride to distant Australian outposts. And, guided by that matchless experience, I fully expect that they will continue to do so throughout their careers, to the great benefit of us all.

 

This post was written by Garrick Williams. Garrick graduated from Michigan in 2009 with a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering. He currently works as a Guidance, Navigation, & Controls Engineer at Orbital Sciences in Chandler, AZ. He estimates that > 50% of every job interview he’s ever had has been spent talking about Solar Car.

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Joining the team in the fall of 2003, Jonathan Brown went to one of the mass meetings during his first semester at the University of Michigan.

“Someone in my dorm had heard about the mass meeting, and I basically decided to tag along to be social. At the time, I think I was more interested in joining IEEE, but their mass meeting was boring…so I never went again. In the end, my hallmate dropped the team, but I never looked back.”

When Jonathan first joined as part of the power-electrical division of the team, there were separate battery, array, and wire harness meetings – and he went to all of them.  Later in the summer of 2004, he was appointed the Array leader where that evolved into the Battery Leader and eventually the Power-Electrical Leader for WSC (where he was the only power-electrical on racecrew).

Currently, Jonathan is a Ph.D student in wireless integrated circuit design at the University of Michigan and there is no doubt that being on the team has helped him get to where he is today.

 “Having been a part of the team has given me a ton of practical experience.  From networking at conferences or debugging a printed circuit board, having practical experience makes all of that easier.  Even if I never use Unigraphics again nor do another layup, I can’t imagine that knowledge can hurt me in the future.  To a certain extent, it doesn’t even matter if Solar Car helps me with my career because it was great fun.  I can’t even imagine my college experience without it.”

Something that Jonathan misses is the time he spent working with a lot of other highly motivated people. One of his favorite memories was being able to see his car roll for the first time.

“It wasn’t much of a car initially- just some old batteries, a body, and some suspension.  But, it was still pretty exciting to see something you’ve helped build actually drive around.”

Another favorite memory of Jonathan’s was the finish of NASC.  The team was only about ten minutes ahead of the University of Minnesota going into the last day of racing, which made it all the more exciting for him to see the car make it across the finish line.

Overall, Jonathan has seen a impressive progression through the various cars built after Momentum and is excited to see how the current team performs during WSC.  However, he like many other Alumni can relate through saying:

 “Being on the team was stressful sometimes, but the University of Michigan Solar Car Team has achieved some remarkable things in our history.”

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Joining the team late in 1998, Sean Kennedy initially worked with the website.  With the website in a dire need for an update, Sean decided that it was more exciting than sweeping floors with Formula SAE and joined Solar Car.  After completely redoing the website (in which some of his old pages still exist), he worked on the Operations division of the team – which included support vehicle prep and semi trailer outfitting.  During Sunrayce ’99, he was in charge of Home Operations and during WSC ’99, Sean spent his time in Scout: monitoring weather, checking on competitors, and finding campsites.

One of Sean’s favorite memories was during WSC when the team went full speed down the Tablelands Highway in Australia during the pre-race shakedown.

“I still have no idea how we got that Toyota Tarago (Previa) bristling with a communications antennae and a less-than-aerodynamic plywood box moving that fast!”

Currently, Sean is a project engineer at Diamond Electric, running the Ford ignition coil programs.  He uses his Solar Car skills almost daily, especially when managing seemingly impossible project deadlines.  Thankfully, he hasn’t had to sleep on any floors after a long night of work since he graduated in 2000! (Sleeping at the workspace is a problem that many Solar Car members face during their time working diligently on the car.)

From getting a new workspace, to the improving work that has been shown through Quantum, Sean is very impressed with the current team.

“Every car seems to improve on the previous version, which given the team history is no small feat.  My only advice to current team members – don’t worry if it seems like you’re spending too much time on Solar Car!  The only regret that I have is not joining the team sooner – even if I would have started out sweeping floors.”

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Ever since his very first look at M-Pulse before coming to Michigan at an engineering intro day in the spring of 2002, David Masselink knew that solar car was the team for him.  At that event he was able to talk to a few power electrical engineers and from there, Masselink had made up his mind to attend the first mass meeting on North campus that fall.  Masselink immediately joined the team as a micro-electrical engineer where he was able to work on Momentum from start to finish as the Micro-Electrical Team Leader.

Since his time within solar car, Masselink has had plenty of opportunities within the automotive and clean energy industry.

   “Throw in an internship I had in Semiconductor industry and my time dealing with processors as a team member and it’s safe to say that there is very little of my life that hasn’t stemmed from my time on the team.”

Just this past year Masselink moved to Mountain View, CA where he was able to start a Software and Embedded Systems consulting company, Elevated Systems, in which focuses on building the tools to make clean energy most cost effective, simpler to install, monitor, and maintain.

 

As many alumni would agree, there are just some memories of solar car that just can’t be forgotten.  For Masselink, nothing can top the excitement of the last day of NASC in 2005.  Although most of it was a blur – with the scare of penalties, the neck to neck racing with Minnesota, and craziness of damaged fairings there was little that made the day thrilling.

    “The most memorable days, however, were as a part of the route survey team at the end of 2004. Myself, Robert Vogt, Mirai Aki, Dave Mazur, and Jeff Rogers all loaded into a minivan and drove a few thousand miles across the continent, in the freezing cold, with the goal of making it back home in about a week. As we know well from being members of the solar car team, being so close to any small group of people will bring out something special… and a little bit weird. I know we all have great memories from that trip and I’m sure we’ve all got some odd memories that are a part of being cramped in a minivan with four other guys for days on end.”

The memories and experience of solar car left a lasting impression on Masselink as he can safely say he misses what being on the team is all about.

“I miss seeing the sexy cars on a day-to-day basis, but even more than that, I miss being inspired and surprised by my team mates each and every day. Also, during the race, at checkpoints, we’d get to interact with the public pretty frequently. While it wasn’t always exciting to stand by a stationary car and answer the same questions again and again, the excitement and awe on the faces of many of the people I talked with was wholly worth it.”

Now, as a former member, Masselink believes there is no denying that the teams since 2005 have raised the bar again and again.  From the concentrators in 2007 to Quantum itself, the recent teams have done things that he has never even dreamed of doing as a member.

 “Quantum, if it’s not the best hope for us Wolverines in WSC so far, I’m not quite sure what is.  I’m so excited for this race and I’ve got a good feeling that this year, WSC will GO BLUE!”

 

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Seeing the poster of the Sunrunner team made joining the solar car team simple for Michael Kanemoto.

  “ They had just won the first contest and were smiling, looking great, and brought a rock star image to what I thought was going to be a very boring profession filled with mathematics and physics.”

Kanemoto went to his first meeting for the Maize and Blue team in 1991 or 1992, and stayed with the team for several years.  During that time he was the Graphic Design Team Leader where he was able to work on the design of the t-shirts, support vehicle graphics, trailer graphics, North American Autoshow display layout, and of course with the vehicle itself.  However, design work wasn’t the only thing he worked on, along the way Kanemoto also worked on some aerodynamics for the team, preparing and traveling the race route, solar array fabrication, and bodywork.

Currently, Kanemoto is a software development manager at Webroot Software.  Even though his job has nothing to do with his BSE or BFA, he believes solar car has helped immensely.

 “The solar car team has helped me with my creativity and work ethic, as well as the ability to be completely dedicated to build something wonderful.  These skills are fundamental to the narrative that’s fortunately lead me to work that I really enjoy doing everyday.”

A memory that Kanemoto holds strong is sitting with Furqan Nazeeri in the BASF where he made the brilliant decision to pain the car “Michigan Yellow”. In addition, another favorite memory was when he travelled to the finish line and watched the Michigan team take the win.  Being an unofficial photographer, Kanemoto was able to take a lot of great shots where he can relive and remember the things that he did.

Giving his seal of approval on the way the current team has developed their outreach and it’s quality, Kanemoto can see that things have changed since his time on the team.

 “Our fundraising and outreach was by telephone (landlines!) and printed newsletter.  The photography was all chemicals and negatives.  FAX was the communication method. Now, the brand has never shone so well and the quality is outstanding.  I’m so proud of the team and happily upstaged by the younger generation(s).”

 Overall, the experience Kanemoto had while on the team has been unforgettable.

  “I realized I may be one of the few people who wasn’t on the race crew, but I still found a deep connection and great skills from the journey.  It takes a lot of people to make a team successful.  I’m just one thread of a great 22 year fabric.  It was some of the hardest and most rewarding work. 100 + hours a week.  Loving work, craftsmanship.

If you at any point wonder if it’s worth it, let me say:

It’s worth it.  There’s life after solar car, but you’ll look back and smile.  There’s talent here and strong friendships.”

 

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Like a few other alumni, Chris Hammond was a student that joined the team shortly after his arrival at Michigan in 2006.  As one of the three freshmen that were on Race Crew in 2007, Chris Hammond was a Power-Electrical Engineer in 2007 and 2008.  During that time, Hammond had a hand on almost everything electrical on the car in which he designed the battery pack, power convertor board, and wire harness.  With the help of his fellow teammates Gerald Giarmo and Sarah Napier, he was also able to personally place every array module on Continuum.  In 2009, Hammond helped to train the Infinium Power and Micro electrical engineers as the Interim Power/Micro Electrical Engineer.

Currently, Hammond works for GE Healthcare in Milwaukee where he writes embedded firmware for CT scanners.  However, the programming and technical skills aren’t the only things he took away from his solar car experience.

“I learned the absolute hard way how to work with a team, how to get things done, and how and when to lead; these things are indispensable in any engineering setting. Having gone through such an intense project makes the “high pressure” environment of new product development seem like a vacation.”

A time that Hammond will never forget is the first time Continuum rolled under it’s own power.  Seeing the ideas on a whiteboard turn into a real-life machine created an amazing feeling for him, as he was able to see all the hard work he put in take shape.

 “The things that really stick with me though are the all-nighters, the weekend-long computer lab camp-outs, and the 24-hour marathon repair sessions. Being locked in a room with a group of amazing people all dedicated to the same goal to the point of burning themselves out, it makes you feel like you can (and must) achieve so much more than you thought possible. You want to work harder, do your absolute best, because you know everyone else is doing the same for you. I haven’t found anything else like it.”

 Missing the feeling of working on something amazing, Hammond also misses the sense of community.  There is the sharing of duty, grief, and triumph, causing him to believe that it was the most dedicated group that he has ever worked with.

And as many other alumni would agree, Chris believes that the current team has the best chance at winning WSC of any Michigan team he knows of.

“Every team learns from the success and failures of the previous teams, and they should always push the envelope of technology.  That being said, I’ve been completely and utterly blown away by what I’ve seen from the 2011 team.  Things that were only a half-joking dream in my days are being thrown down like gauntlets.  I should have expected this, of course, after leaving the team in the hands of Santosh Kumar and Gerald Chang.  Those two are the absolute embodiment of ‘Not Messing Around’, and it’s apparent that the rest of the team takes after them.”

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Joining in the fall of his freshman year in 2006, Alex Dowling was a part of the strategy division from the very beginning.  Throughout his time on the team, Dowling worked his way up in the strategy division, starting as Interim Strategy Director in 2007, Head Strategist for NASC 2008, and later Strategy Director in 2009. Even after his time at the University, Dowling was able to be in an alumni media vehicle for the recent 2010 American Solar Challenge.

Currently, Dowling is attending graduate school at Carnegie Melon University to receive a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering.  The exposure from solar car to computer science, applied mathematics, engineering, and physics prepped him for studying at graduate school where he does research on process optimization. Using similar math and methods of how to drive the car, he can apply that knowledge to how to operate chemical plants (specifically on how to optimize the design separation processes for carbon capture and sequestration for next generation coal power plants).

“I’m in this cool position where I am able to help the current strategists with what they’re doing and also help myself study for school. I like how I’m able to use a concept I learned in grad school and apply it to solar car to show them better ways to analyze vehicle data.”

A favorite memory from his time on the team would be when he was preparing for NASC in 2008.  He was running the strategy division, modeling practice runs and driving a couple hours to validate the simulation model.

   “It finally started working and it was crazy to believe.  It’s really cool to see something you’ve worked on for a long time get to the real world and actually work.”

A more nerve-wracking experience for Dowling was at the start of NASC ’08.  The first day was very cloudy and from a strategy standpoint, it makes racing more challenging.  It was difficult to get the battery charged and added more stress to the situation.  Trying to get to the first stage stop was increasingly stressful for Dowling as Head Strategist, where he made all the calls for how fast the car should be going.  In addition, the treaded tires left on from their unfortunate crash a few weeks before the race consumed more energy than if they used the un-treaded tires.  At the control stop, the team was able to perform a tire change in under than 30 minutes, giving the car a little bit more time on the battery’s power.  Luckily, the car was able to pull into the first stage stop with just 3% of battery power left and the rest of the race ran smoothly.

As far as Dowling’s thoughts on the current team goes, he believes it is the team’s best shot in the race.

“It’s a phenomenal car and being able to participate in the design review documentation and see simulation estimates of Quantum, I’m excited to see it run.  With the awesome strategists right now, combined with the new math that I’m acquainting them with, they’re doing things that I never would have thought of doing two years ago.”

But as a whole, Dowling hasn’t decided to give solar car up just yet.

“I like the fact that I can be an alumni and be involved with helping strategist but also apply it to work and school work. Even though the others say I need to let go, I’m able to justify still being involved. But, I miss working on something that I’m really passionate about.  Although I enjoy what I do in grad school, it’s not enough to spend 80 hours a week just thinking about it.”

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As one of the lead aero-body designers and drivers for both MaizeBlaze and M-Pulse, Jason Kramb has raced in two national races and two world races.  Within that time he has experienced a few thousand miles of testing time, enabling him to say he is one of the few individuals who has driven on the three major proving grounds (GM in Milford, Ford in Dearborn and Romeo, and Chrysler in Chelsea) in a solar car.

After solar car, Jason worked for a small jet engine manufacturer in Michigan then moved on to work for Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA.

 “Scaled is a company that works exactly like the Solar Car Team always did.  Same materials, same way of making parts, same approach to design, same hands-on building, same everything.”

There he worked on a number of cool projects such as the flight of SpaceShipOne, becoming a part of the first privately funded team to put a man into space.  Now, SpaceShipOne hangs proudly in the National Air and Space Museum, embodying Jason’s signature.

Afterwards, Jason’s design skills were put to the test as he was the aerodynamicist for WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership for SpaceShipTwo.

 “On the first flight of WhiteKnightTwo, I have to admit it was pretty cool to see something you designed and did the analysis on take off right in front of you, using technology and tools that aren’t all that much more technologically advanced or complex than the tools I used when designing MaizeBlaze.  Solar Car truly is working with the leading edge of technology and it’s the best thing I ever did for my career. As I’ve told people many times, Solar Car was the hardest thing I ever did, but I’ll probably spend the rest of my life looking for a job just like it.”

Currently, Jason works with the Corvette Racing Team, developing the aerodynamics and wind tunnel testing the race cars that are competing all over the world against the best cars the rest of world can bring.  “Somehow, racing gets stuck in your blood – whether it’s 500hp Corvettes, or 2hp Solar Cars.”

As far as memories are concerned, Jason reminisces over the nights he spent sleeping on top of the semi-trailer in the middle of the Outback in areas where there wasn’t any form of civilization for 100 miles in any direction.  “Amazing nights with the breeze blowing to keep us cool and an endless sky of stars above us.  It was a good time.”

“But, nothing beats the crashing of M-Pulse just 17 days before the start of ASC 2001, then pulling into the finish as national champions.  We were devastated by the crash, but we knew we could rebuild the car and have it better than it was before it crashed.  It was better, and nothing could beat us after that.  We were determined to make it happen, no matter what got in our way.”

As far at the new team is concerned, “I wish them the best of luck. I’ve been impressed with everything and they’re doing a great job at keeping the Michigan Solar Car tradition going. Onward to Australia!”

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Joining the team during his first month at the University of Michigan in 2007, Josh Feldman began as part of the strategy division.  From there, he became part of the NASC 2008 Race Crew, a driver and Race Strategist in WSC 2009, and part of StratCom in 2010-2011.

Feldman’s time at solar car has been ingrained into his memory to the point where he claims, “Just ask anyone who’s worked with me and they’ll tell you that I can come up with some random anecdote that relates to just about anything we had to deal with on solar car.”  He has the ability to list numerous memories, starting from constructing Infinium’s lower in his socks with a mask, or driving Infinium down the Stuart Highway for what seems like an eternity with no apparent change of scenery, or even being at a bar in Adelaide where the locals thought they were part of the “fire brigade” due to the yellow coats they were wearing.

Like many of his fellow solar car members and alumni, Feldman states that he misses the family aspect to the team.  “Summers in Ann Arbor for solar car were at the same time brutal and amazing.  Getting to the workspace at 8 a.m. and leaving at 2 or 3 a.m. wasn’t fun, but it was made tolerable because of the company of my teammates.  Having 25 siblings can be daunting, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Currently, Josh works as a software engineer on the Software Update Intergration Team at Apple, where he is developing major updates to Mac OS X.  Being on the team not only gave him a sense of family, but also the ability to be part of a team.  When starting his real life after graduation, there were a lot of anxieties, but how to work with others wasn’t one of them.

In all honesty, when asked about the current 2011 team, Feldman had his doubts on how they turned out.  However, he has been nothing but impressed since leaving the team.

“They are far more ambitious than we were, and that’s saying something (we had four matching black Chevy Tahoes!).  Their pursuit of aggressive timelines, their drive to improve the efficiency in all aspects of the car, their incredible improvements to Strategy, and even their community outreach have far surpassed what I thought would be done.  If we ever had a shot, this’d definitely be our best one.”

 

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Joining the solar car team during her sophomore year in 2007, Julia Hawley started as an events coordinator for Continuum. Later that year in December, she was elected Business Director, a position she held until she graduated from the Ross School of Business in 2010.

Currently, Julia works for Google in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an Account Manager with AdWords on the Consumer Packaged Goods team. At Google, Julia continues to participate on the business side of an engineering project, taking full advantage and opportunity to learn about all the products Google engineers create.

“It makes my job much more meaningful to understand how I fit into the bigger picture and to see how hard the other teams at Google work. Being the Business Director for the [solar car] team has taught me a lot about management and what needs to happen in order for the team to succeed. This perspective has allowed me to be more proactive with my leadership team at Google.”

Julia has recalled countless memories of being on the team, but one of her favorites was when she helped to arrange the 2005 Alumni trip to Aruba. She was sitting at work and the Prime Minister of Aruba started G-chatting her to figure out the logistics of the trip. Moments like that happened frequently, continuously blowing her away with how incredible the team was.

“However, the memory that can always make me laugh was one night in Australia, the whole team was sleeping when Frederick Barthelemy, an alumnus of the team, shot up and started screaming ‘it’s coming in!’ The whole team jolted awake, some people were up and out of the tent in panic in a blink of the eye. I on the other hand turned to John Federspiel who was next to me to ask what had happened. He explained (half asleep) that there was a small rodent in the tent (he gave me a hand measurement) at which point we both turned over and went back to sleep. In the morning we found out Frederick was having a nightmare that a bulldozer with spikes was about to plow the tent over.”

Julia has high hopes for the 2011 team, as she believes they have amazing energy. She reconfirms, “The Business Division has been able to make all the dreams I had for the team come alive. It’s incredibly hard to make time for business initiatives while still making sure the right resources are going to the core of the team – building the actual car. It is so nice to see that everything I worked so hard for has not only been sustained, but has been taken to the next level.”

Overall, Julia’s experience on the team has been more than positive as she ends by confessing, “Solar car was the reason I got up in the morning. I miss being part of something so incredible and believing in something so much that you will sacrifice everything for it. I miss the challenge and how much I grew as a person every day. I miss the engineers explaining their systems to me. I miss the jokes and the quote wall. And I miss feeling so invincible and that anything is possible.”

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