During this year’s Independent Activities Period, a group of 29 first- and second-year students immersed themselves in wildfire suppression and search-and-rescue missions. Not literally, of course; these projects were aircraft autonomy simulations, yet they couldn’t be more timely, given the growing incidence of natural disasters attributed to climate change. The two missions were at the core of this year’s Momentum program, a six-unit interdisciplinary design course facilitated by the Office of Minority Education (OME). The course, which has been offered since 2007, provides an intensive, hands-on engineering experience tackling a…
