Project Envisioning Air Transport Between UC Campuses Earns Award

A simulation for a proposed air transport system among University of California campuses earned an award for a team of UC Merced students.

Advised by mechanical engineering Professor Francesco Danzi, students Kyra Ruiz, Randy Serrano, Ana Hernandez, Samir Ahmed and Eduardo Miramontes competed against three other teams in the 2024-25 CITRIS Aviation Prize design contest. Teams developed air operations simulation software for a proposed air transportation system between the four CITRIS campuses.

The UC Merced team won the CITRIS Aviation Excellence award.

The competition is held annually by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), a UC research center focused on creating IT solutions that generate societal and economic benefits for everyone. A UC Merced team won the very first contest in 2021-22, with a design for a 115-mile-long autonomous drone endurance flight.

"I think the most challenging aspect was doing the research to figure out what we needed and piecing it all together," said Ahmed, a first-year student from Fremont. "The most fun was just working with the team."

Team members named their project Corvus Systems, inspired by the constellation Corvus, which they said closely resembles the layout of the four UC campuses on a map. Their main objective, according to the executive summary, was to develop a sustainable model for electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) services between campuses.

The team developed a modular simulation environment integrating real-time flight scheduling, optimization algorithms, multi-modal ground transportation and 3D virtual modeling of UC campuses.

"As their faculty mentor, I find it immensely rewarding to watch our students succeed," Danzi said. "Our team was composed entirely of undergraduates, and it is remarkable that they earned this award even before our formal aerospace engineering curriculum launches next fall. All five students are active members of UC Merced's American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics chapter, where they sharpen their aerospace skills through hands-on projects - and that experience clearly paid off here."

Danzi said he also is deeply grateful to Brandon Stark, director of the University of California Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft Systems Safety, for invaluable insights he shared with the team throughout the competition. The center provides system-wide expertise to all UC campuses, cooperative extensions and other research stations across the state of California.

Ruiz said the team had to do a lot of work to balance the skillsets among members.

"The presentation was the most fun, which was ironic because I kept complaining about it," said Ruiz, a fourth-year mechanical engineering major from Riverside. "We had to present in front of a bunch of big-name companies. They'd ask you technical questions. It was like a puzzle."

Though the project involved a simulation, the team members said they could see a day when people will hop into an air car between campuses and towns. I do believe air mobility is a thing that's going to happen, whether in the UC system or outside of it," Ruiz said. "But we have to figure out the infrastructure and change the laws and regulations around it."

More information about the competition is available on the CITRIS Aviation Prize website.