Designing the future of flight at UC! Multidisciplinary competition helps students build confidence, technical skills and professional contacts — and bring home more than $15,000 in awards.
On the afternoon of Monday, May 5, in a conference room at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, four teams of students from the University of California (UC) triple-checked their slide decks as they prepared to deliver original design proposals to two dozen industry and academic leaders. The culmination of nearly a full year of work, the ideas will help to lay the groundwork for a first-of-its-kind intercampus air transportation system for UC students, faculty and staff.
These teams comprise the top performers of the 2024–25 CITRIS Aviation Prize, a competition that challenges UC students to explore the leading edge of aviation and air mobility research and application.
Organized by CITRIS Aviation, a research initiative of UC’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), the contest launched in 2021. Over the past two years, undergraduate and graduate teams have tackled the complex task of designing an air taxi system to connect the four CITRIS campuses at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz.
“It’s not just a technical puzzle,” said CITRIS Aviation Director Ricardo Sanfelice, chair of the UC Santa Cruz Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “It’s a multidisciplinary test bed spanning control, communications, autonomy and policy. This kind of integrated thinking is exactly what we need to shape the future of advanced air mobility.”
“I am thrilled about the collaboration between academia, government and private industry in supporting the CITRIS Aviation Prize,” said Alexandre Bayen, director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, Liao-Cho Innovation Endowed Chair and professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley, and associate provost for the Berkeley Space Center. “We will continue to strengthen these bonds through research partnerships, summits and symposia, internships and other programs that benefit our talented UC students and the state of California.”
Building on last year’s competition, which focused on conceptual designs for air mobility infrastructure, the 2024–25 contest required students to create critical aviation simulation software, and guidance, navigation and control (GNC) algorithms for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, as well as an operation plan for the rollout of the proposed system. Finalists competed for a total of $18,000 in awards, sponsored by Atech, DART, Archer Aviation, Supernal and MathWorks.
With mentorship from faculty advisers, the teams built out robust plans, designing algorithms to guide aircraft, schedule flights and monitor system performance. The competitors sought to optimize energy usage and ensure safe operations across the campus environments, all while prioritizing seamless integration with existing ground transportation.
According to the judges, which included representatives from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, the finalists displayed contagious enthusiasm and creativity — and impressive maturity that resulted in effective, comprehensive software design.
Uniting four campuses with one bold vision
The following teams presented their final proposals:
- UC Berkeley
- Team members: Jorge Duarte Urbina, Jordan Keoki Kam, Atiila Kharobo, Andrew Park, Rishi Kumar Srinivasan
- Advisers: Vishwanath Bulusu, lecturer of civil and environmental engineering; Raja Sengupta, professor of civil and environmental engineering
- UC Davis
- Team members: Oliver Austin, Shreya Chandra, Yemikael Dawit, Nicolas Holasek, Rachel Long, Orfeas Magoulas
- Advisers: Camli Badrya, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Zhaodan Kong, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Peng Wei, postdoctoral researcher of biological and agricultural engineering
- UC Merced
- Team members: Samir Ahmed, Ana Hernandez, Eduardo Miramontes, Kyra Ruiz, Randy Serrano
- Adviser: Francesco Danzi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering
- UC Santa Cruz
- Team members: Alexander Aghili, Andre Aledia, Zoë La Clair, Christine Perez, Eric Vin
- Adviser: Daniel Fremont, assistant professor of computer science and engineering
The UC Berkeley team, which featured two undergraduates, two master’s students and one doctoral student, tied with the UC Davis team for the Atech Award for Most Innovative Design for Air Mobility, with each team winning $3,000 of the $6,000 award.
UC Davis’s all-undergraduate team proved to be the day’s big winners: They also received the DART Community Integration Award, worth $6,000, and the $3,000 CITRIS Aviation Award for Most Comprehensive Software Design.
The UC Merced team, composed of five undergraduates, tied with UC Santa Cruz’s team, which included four undergraduates and one doctoral student, to split the $3,000 CITRIS Aviation Excellence Award.
Charting new courses
This year’s large-scale technical target gave students insight into scoping achievable solutions to big problems and placing innovation within its social context — a challenge not often offered by classwork. In addition to software development and user-centered design, the competitors delved into financial analysis, business perspectives and policy strategy.
“There were a lot of hurdles in the formulation of the problem at first,” reported Rishi Kumar Srinivasan, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley’s Master of Engineering program. “For example, in order to estimate timetables for a scheduling software, we had to figure out why students would want to travel between campuses. Given the heavy cost of urban air mobility, theorizing something that worked was fairly difficult.”
The teams then transitioned from brainstorming to implementation mode, strengthening their tangible skills and taking advantage of opportunities to break outside of their comfort zones. Orfeas Magoulas, an undergraduate majoring in aerospace engineering at UC Davis, noted that the process wasn’t easy, but it was worth every hour in the end.
“The concept of optimization was completely new to me,” Magoulas said. “It’s the process of taking a real-life scenario, breaking it down into mathematics and turning it into something a computer can solve. It was difficult but incredibly rewarding to learn, because now I can use the same techniques in future projects and show these skills to employers.”
Despite having an impressive breadth of details to consider, the teams never lost focus on their final goal: realizing an accessible transportation network with a positive impact.
“It was a good exercise in learning how to create a story from our analysis,” said Alex Aghili, a mathematics and computer science undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz. “After doing a lot of technical work, you have to discover the narrative that informs your next steps, and that’s a very important skill we were able to develop.”
By the final presentation, students like Randy Serrano, a mechanical engineering undergraduate from UC Merced, felt more confident in newfound skills and relished the opportunity to showcase their expertise.
“Going to the event in San Carlos was awesome. We got to see all of the advisers from the other teams and talk about our different approaches to problems,” Serrano said.
“We also got to build connections with the company representatives who supported the competition as sponsors and judges, such as those from DART and NASA Ames. It was a great opportunity to get our names out there.”
The faculty and staff organizers on the CITRIS Aviation team, who had underscored the importance of multidisciplinarity and workforce readiness in the contest’s objectives, were thrilled with the competitors’ feedback.
“The students always impress me,” said Sanfelice. “They are very resourceful at finding the right platforms and expertise and at making the right connections.”
Catalyzing community-focused transformation
While the students, on the cusp of launching their careers, absorbed technical skills and project management tips from their advisers and mentors, the seasoned industry leaders, too, gained new perspectives from the teams. This flash of inspiration motivated, for instance, Atech’s innovation-focused design award.
“Throughout the competition, students across the four campuses brought a contagious energy to the challenge of creating a sustainable advanced air mobility ecosystem,” said Mauro do Santo Junior, head of engineering and innovation at Atech. “We were surprised by the level of maturity they presented.”
In addition to their admirable enthusiasm, judges and sponsors recognized the students’ profound commitment to realizing the possibilities of advanced aviation and driving thoughtful, community-conscious transformation.
“UC students are incredibly resourceful and quick to learn,” said Harish Chintakunta, a customer success engineer at MathWorks. “Many are aligning their academic work with their personal interests — some of the participating students were pilots themselves — which made their projects both technically strong and deeply motivated.”
Josh Metz, executive director of DART, celebrated the participants’ hard work and the contest’s ambition.
“The CITRIS Aviation Prize is a catalyst,” he said. “For students, it builds confidence and visibility as future industry leaders. For companies, it surfaces fresh perspectives and potential talent. For the industry as a whole, it reinforces the importance of community integration and public interest as central pillars of innovation — not afterthoughts.
“Competitions like this are essential for growing a workforce and ecosystem that is future-ready and socially grounded.”
Photos by Eric Guerrieri/CITRIS and the Banatao Institute