3/28/2025
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A continued outreach project with middle school students at the Campus Middle School for Girls, in Urbana, was highlighted earlier this month with a demonstration of the drones they built. The project is now in its third year.
MechSE professor Naira Hovakimyan and her graduate researchers, along with MechSE Education Outreach Coordinator Joe Muskin and Director of Undergraduate Programs Stephanie Ott-Monsivais, have been teaching teams of students how to design and build their own drones.
The MechSE colleagues and graduate students led the middle schoolers in designing their drone frame using CAD software, 3D printing in MechSE’s Jackson Innovation Studio, then building their design idea, adding motors and controllers. Monday’s event allowed this year’s student teams to test their creations for the first time.
Tami Adams, Executive Director of Campus Middle School for Girls, said the project has enabled her students to see how important coding, computer science and mechanical design are when thinking about engineering.
“Our students went from very limited experience to designing a platform for a drone in Tinkercad to now actually flying it. It’s been really wonderful to watch their transformation – which is one reason I welcomed this collaboration with the MechSE team. Our school is committed to making sure girls have experiences in STEM that show them all the ways they can be part of engineering,” Adams said.
This collaborative project has been supported by the NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI)-funded AVIATE Center, for which Hovakimyan serves as Director. Established in 2022, the Center for Autonomous Vehicles in Air Transportation Engineering (AVIATE) is a multi-disciplinary consortium of researchers and engineers from university and industry, with a vision of furthering the technology for rapidly emerging urban air vehicles (UAVs) and safe autonomous flight.
Video developed by Andy Sun. Photos by Rachel Berry.