Joy Yeh, the President and Electronics Lead of Hopkins Student Wind Energy Team (HSWET), is a senior majoring in EE and CS. Shivam Dixit, a junior in mechanical engineering and senior Kaity Shaughnessy are the co-vice presidents of the team. Together, these three students represent part of the board for the Hopkins Student Wind Energy Team and share a deep passion for sustainability, aerospace, and aerodynamics. They were interviewed by WEDC Student Advisory Board member Claire Sklar, looking to explore how HSWET fosters multidisciplinary collaboration and design.
HSWET strives to attend the Collegiate Wind Competition every year, held by the National Renewable Energy Lab/Conference. Their objective is to test a model wind turbine and wind tunnel, following specific competition requirements like wind speed and optimize power output. They work towards developing an autonomous system without the interference of people, and on the day-to-day develop different hardware and face numerous engineering challenges. The engineering part of the organization is broken down into aerodynamics, which deals with blade design and maximizing power output, the generator, which they choose or build to create power, the structure, which involves the creation of the entire base, tower, and housing for turbine components, and finally electronics and controls. Every year, they face a unique challenge – this year, the structure has to float!
In general, the entire competition encompasses three separate sub-competitions that encourage the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams – engineering, project development (formal proposal of wind farm, encouraging the participation of economics majors), and connection creation. The team works hard to involve not just engineers but also other disciplines that are simply interested in sustainability and learning – they build an environment where learning is practical and hold community events for the student body and surrounding community. Multidisciplinary collaboration is further supported by the integration of the subteams – the electronics team has to integrate with structure and aerodynamics, as all teams have to communicate in a systems engineering way to yield a successful product.
Ultimately, the club leaders advised anyone who is even marginally interested in sustainability or learning new skills to join, regardless of their majors. They emphasize the importance of trying new things and gaining new experiences, especially highlighting the importance of working in a diverse team (different backgrounds, skillsets, knowledge, and experiences).