The UCLA branch of AIAA offers hands-on experience and technical management opportunities through its three student projects. Near the end of the school year, each team participates in its respective national competition against leading universities. Gain valuable knowledge and team-building skills to put on your resumes and marvel your interviewers with your stories. This is your chance to apply the material you learn in class!
Design/Build/Fly (DBF)
Project Manager: Zehao Rong
Email: designbuildfly at g dot ucla dot edu
Website: https://dbfatucla.github.io/DBFatUCLA
AIAA – Student Design/Build/Fly Competition
The annual Design/Build/Fly competition brings in schools from across the globe to provide real-world aircraft design experience for engineering students. Teams are tasked with designing, constructing, and testing an unmanned, electric-powered, radio-controlled aircraft to meet specified design requirements. Along with the airplane, a professional design report must be submitted. In previous years, design requirements have included various different payloads, size constraints, and propulsion restrictions. Three missions must be completed with the plane, including one speed mission and two payload missions. Design and construction proceed from October through early March, leading up to the competition in mid-April.
Rocket Project at UCLA
President: Anna Cosmin-Spanoche
Email: RocketProject at ucla dot edu
Website: http://rocketproject.seas.ucla.edu/
Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition
Every year, the Rocket Project at UCLA competes at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, where each team must launch and successfully recover a 10lb payload to either 10,000 or 25,000 ft. Our group is composed of students from various disciplines, including Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, and many others. We combine our skills and ingenuity in order to build upon the efforts and knowledge of each year. We strive to educate new members so that they may help us explore new technologies and systems. After successfully developing and launching a parallel-staged rocket, our major work will focus on the creation of a liquid bi-propellant rocket that will fly to 45,000 ft!
Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS)
President: James Tseng
Email: uas at ucla dot edu
Website: https://uas.seas.ucla.edu/
Premier Undergraduate Aerial Robotics Team
UAS is involved in the full system development process of building drones, from initial design to prototyping, manufacturing, and flying them. UAS is a diverse organization of various engineering desciplines and all years and transfers, which provides an opportunity for each of our members to be engaged in and learn in a multi-disciplinary team. We have experience building large-scale drones in numerous mission-driven competitions, one of which the submission successfully competed against drone startup companies, and also has experience with a grant-funded research project exploring the use of autonomy. From modeling and manufacturing carbon fiber airframes to writing and testing new flight control software, we explore all aspects of aerial robotics and challenge what is possible with drones.
Bruin Spacecraft Group (BSG)
President: Sahil Gosain
Email: uclabruinspace at gmail dot com
Website: https://bruinspace.com/
Spacecraft Technology and Engineering Student Group
Bruin Spacecraft Group aims to provide a collaborative environment for students of many backgrounds and fields to gain first-hand experience in space engineering and technology. Though we may vary in experience and discipline, we are united by a love of space. Our two projects are entirely organized and executed by students. Overseer, our beginner-friendly project, builds high altitude weather balloons. Rapid, our flagship project, is currently developing a CubeSat to fly an experimental ion thruster in low Earth orbit. Additionally, we develop scientific payloads for space research. To enrich member experience, we also host a workshop series which include talks by professionals in industry and academia, professional development events, and technology education programs.