Featured Snippet

Illini Solar Car

As the student advisor for Illini Solar Car (ISC), the University of Illinois’s solar electric vehicle team, I have mentored dozens of students in battery sensing hardware, printed circuit board (PCB) design, and vehicle architecture. Spending two summers in our off-campus garage surrounded by electrical test equipment and miniscule circuit components, I explored the depths of battery-pack electronics and solar array design. Now, as an aspiring PhD researcher, I hope to draw upon these technical project experiences along with my years of research collaboration across both institutions to advance vehicle electrification technologies.

During my time on the team, there were a number of memorable projects that I worked on. Most of these relate to the high-voltage powertrain of the vehicle. For one year, I was also a lead on the strategy and telemetry side of the team, so I will explain visual data from that perspective. As with academic projects, I have tried to censor many details about the architecture that the team wouldn't share online. Within the solar car community, especially when displaying the car at in-person events or answering a new teams questions, these restrictions are generally disregarded. Feel free to ask me more probing questions.