Northwestern University
IN-4: Innovation 4

The Northwestern University Solar Car Team (NUsolar) is an undergraduate student organization that designs, builds, and races solar-powered vehicles. Our objective is to enhance the education and career preparation for Northwestern students by providing hands-on project management, design, and manufacturing experience in addition to providing an outlet for students to demonstrate their skills and commitment to potential employers. NUsolar is a completely student-run organization, so team members can take on a wide spectrum of responsibilities including engineering, manufacturing, operations, marketing and finance. As a result, the team attracts students from several departments in the McCormick School of Engineering, as well as other schools at Northwestern. Being on the team allows students to gain real-world experience which is relevant in any career: they must learn how to operate in a specialized team and work within budgets and deadlines, all while confronting the unpredictable surprises that only an authentic, real-life project can throw at you.

NUsolar is a completely student-run organization, so team members can take on a wide spectrum of responsibilities including engineering, manufacturing, operations, marketing and finance. As a result, the team attracts students from several departments in the McCormick School of Engineering, as well as other schools at Northwestern. Being on the team allows students to gain real-world experience which is relevant in any career: they must learn how to operate in a specialized team and work within budgets and deadlines, all while confronting the unpredictable surprises that only an authentic, real-life project can throw at you.

From the current Project Manager of NUsolar on the current status of innovations the team is working on:

As far as innovation goes, I think the biggest thing to highlight currently in the team's history is our recent rebuilding of the team. Back in 2009, NUsolar had 20-30 students participating and placed 3rd in the Formula Sun Grand Prix with our car SC5. Shortly after that, we built a new car, SC6. Unfortunately, this car suffered a series of catastrophic failures in 2011 and 2012 that left the car broken and the team without good leadership. Members got discouraged and left.

In 2013, my freshman year, our team did not attend the race because we failed to get our battery pack working and meet the minimum requirements that we set for ourselves for the year. On top of that, all 5 of the remaining seniors graduated and there happened to be no rising seniors to replace them. That meant that in 2014 we were a team of about 10 - 12 people, 1 junior, a couple sophomores, and a handful of freshmen, and almost zero experience working on, much less building anew, a solar car. But we had some dedicated people, and we spent nearly two years learning project management skills, recruiting new members, reconnecting with lost contacts, and reestablishing ourselves as a high-quality vehicle team.

One of the realizations -- innovations, if you will -- that we had during this time of renewal was that our team's mission needed to change. We couldn't just be a team whose goal was to build a solar car. If all your focused on is building a car, and then that car breaks, you've lost everything the team's worked for. Instead, our new mission is to build better engineers who are "sustainably-minded". We just happen to do that by working on a solar car. Because of this change, our members understand now that if the car breaks or we can't go to the race, it's not the end of the world. Our innovative mission is simply to challenge each other to learn.

Today, we have 25 active members again, and have nearly completed an entirely new solar car, named "7". Our members are competent in CAD, welding, machining, composite materials manufacturing, circuit board design, embedded systems programming, high-voltage power management, and more. We recently started holding weekly design reviews to give students the opportunity to practice presenting and communicating their findings -- a critical part of engineering which is sometimes overlooked. We even recently received a large grant from the Northwestern Sustainability Fund to help us pay for 7's solar panels next year.

Since you may want some more concrete examples of innovation, I'll list two of the most recent innovative projects that we've worked on.

Aero Project: Due to space and cost constraints (NU gives its 3 vehicle teams enough space for about 1.5 teams to work in safely, so we're always cramped), we decided to forgo the traditional method of creating a body for our new car, "7". Instead, we borrowed ideas from boat-building and created a mold for our body out of a series of foam ribs. This saved several thousand dollars in cost and allowed us to work in a smaller space than we would have been able to otherwise.

CAN software project: We developed a software library for the popular Arduino platform that allows solar car teams to program micro-controllers to interact with their car's communications protocol. The code is freely available on our Github.

NUsolar also promotes alternative energy in the community by increasing the public’s awareness of “green” energy and demonstrating the feasibility of solar power. In addition to racing our car at the Formula Sun Grand Prix and American Solar Challenge, we also participate in numerous outreach events in the wider Chicago area. We frequently take our car to elementary schools and community service events with the goal of promoting STEM fields. This past quarter alone, NUsolar members visited Roycemore School and Evanston Township High School to give a presentation about the solar car and solar energy. We also participated in Patton Elementary’s 2nd annual Family STEM Night, where students and their families are invited to participate in different engineering and science activities, and gave tours of the autobay to groups of middle school and high school girls participating in the Society of Women Engineers’ Career Day for Girls. Not only does NUsolar work to build better engineers within Northwestern, but also inspires students in the Chicago area to pursue STEM careers.