Formula SAE Warrior Racing working hands-on in the community
Wayne State's Warrior Racing team has a long history of community engagement. Recently, members continued that tradition by assisting two local high school FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) teams in manufacturing components for their robots. The Warrior Racing team helped students on the Las Guerrillas team from the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills and Team Cosmos from Hamtramck High School in Hamtramck.
Warrior Racing team member Brandon Horsch, a junior in electrical engineering, is an alumnus of the Las Guerrillas team, and credits his extensive knowledge of computer-aided design to his experiences with them. Warrior Racing President Kristina Vujic, a Ph.D. student in economics, has close ties to Team Cosmos because Hamtramck is her hometown and her sister is one of the team's faculty FRC mentors. These connections gave the Warriors an opportunity to step out into the community in support of STEM education.
"We believe it is important to encourage these skill sets from a young age in order to make an investment in the education of future engineers and scientists. Being involved with Formula SAE has shown me the importance of having these experiences prior to one's college education. Our team is always willing and excited to share our knowledge with the future of our profession," says Vujic.
Members of Warrior Racing also attended two FRC events this season in Woodhaven and Center Line to see the teams' progress firsthand. At Woodhaven, Las Guerrillas took fourth place and Team Cosmos placed 12th overall out of 39 teams. Additionally, the Cosmos earned the Entrepreneurship Award, which recognizes a team's ability to develop a comprehensive business plan that helps achieve team goals. In Center Line, Team 123 - comprised of students from the Cosmos team and alliance teams from Pershing High School and Warren Consolidated Schools - made it to the semifinals, ultimately placing sixth out of 40 teams. In addition, they earned the FRC's Engineering Inspiration Award, one of the most prestigious awards an FRC team can receive. The achievements of Team 123 this season have earned them a spot to compete at the Michigan FRC State Championship in Grand Rapids.
Warrior Racing is a student organization at Wayne State University composed of both undergraduate and graduate students from different disciplines. The team designs, manufactures and markets an open-wheel race car against other universities from all over the world. The competitions include dynamic and static events designed to test the team's knowledge of design, manufacturing and marketing of the formula one car. Each component of the car is designed by students and manufactured in the Formula SAE shop at Wayne State University.
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Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering 380 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students. For more information about engineering at Wayne State University, visit engineering.wayne.edu.