My sophomore year at Cornell I started a team to compete in SpaceX's Hyperloop competition. Based on my experience with
collaboratively designed prosthetics I decided to form an alliance with five other campuses: Northeastern University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Harvey Mudd, University of Michigan, and Princeton.
I did an impressively bad job leading the Cornell contingent of the alliance. I didn't know how to delegate work and I thought I knew more than I did about engineering so I did a frightening fraction of the design myself. In spite of that, the team pulled together over $150,000 in sponsorships, fixed my mistakes, and built a functional 18 ft long air-levitated Hyperloop pod in time for competition. Unfortunately SpaceX's test track had technical difficulties so only three of ten test-ready teams got to run their vehicles at the first competition weekend, and we can only lay claim to a nebulous "top 10" place. In the second year of the competition the improved OpenLoop pod placed 2nd under the new banner of
Paradigm Hyperloop.
Many of my best friends and hardest-fought lessons came from this project, and I'm enormously thankful for the engineering and leadership experience it provided even though I wasn't ready for it. OpenLoop is also featured in a
documentary by Legendary Pictures so you can see my 19-year-old blunders in high definition.
Lastly, OpenLoop led me to take a systems engineering internship with
Hyperloop One after my Junior year which was a fantastic experience. My team was brilliant and they paid me to learn tons of new skills.