Second Year, Second Place: The Story Behind the Success

When people hear that Stanford's Chem-E-Car team placed second at the 2026 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Western Regional Conference, they usually want to know about the car.

They want to know about the chemistry, the batteries, the testing, or how close we were to the target distance.

But for me, the story starts much earlier.

As a student who had been interested in chemical engineering since high school, I was excited to finally be surrounded by people who shared that passion. Through Stanford's AIChE student chapter, I discovered Chem-E-Car, a national competition that challenges students to design and build a shoebox-sized car powered and stopped entirely by chemical reactions.

The idea immediately captured my attention. It was exactly the kind of hands-on engineering experience I had hoped to find in college: a chance to apply classroom concepts while working alongside equally passionate students.

At the time, however, Stanford Chem-E-Car was still trying to find its footing. A small group of students had begun working toward bringing the team back, and I eagerly attended meetings and work sessions whenever I could.

Unfortunately, despite months of effort, we did not qualify for the 2024 competition.

I remember feeling discouraged. For the first time, I felt like I had found something I genuinely wanted to be part of, only to watch the opportunity slip away before it had the chance to become real.

Despite this, we attended the 2024 AIChE Western Regional Conference at UC Berkeley anyway.

Walking around the competition floor completely changed my perspective. Students cheered for one another, celebrated successful runs, and proudly shared projects they had spent months building. There was an energy in the room that went far beyond engineering.

It was about community.

I remember thinking, this is what I want Stanford students to experience.

That moment became the beginning of Stanford Chem-E-Car's revival.

With the support of our faculty advisor, Dr. Katarina Guzman, graduate student advisor Austin Kwan, and an incredible founding team of students, we committed ourselves to bringing the team back. Austin's mentorship helped guide the team's growth, from troubleshooting technical challenges to encouraging students to pursue ambitious ideas. Together, we built an organization from the ground up.

Behind every competition run were recruiting events, funding requests, engineering reports, travel logistics, workshop planning, and countless hours spent coordinating people and schedules. Like many student leaders, I quickly learned that leadership is often less glamorous than it appears.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was that leadership isn't about doing everything yourself. As the team grew, so did the need to trust others, delegate responsibility, and create opportunities for students to take ownership. Some of the most meaningful moments came from watching newer members step into leadership roles and make the project their own.

Looking back, one of my proudest moments did not happen at a competition. It happened when students returned after our first season in 2025, despite a heartbreaking regional disqualification. They volunteered to lead workshops, mentor new members, and take ownership of the team's future.

That was when I realized we had built something much bigger than a competition team.

We had built a community.

What excited me even more was seeing students begin pushing the team beyond what our founding group had imagined. Members launched research and development efforts exploring rechargeable batteries, biological stopping mechanisms, mechatronics, and entirely new vehicle concepts.

Students also strengthened every aspect of the team. Abigail Greenwell and ThanhVan Dang advanced battery performance, while Grayson Kyle and Talal Younis improved our stopping mechanism design. Colleen Burbridge and Brad Yac-Diaz led mechanical design efforts, Brandyn Lu and Marina Castilla-Liu expanded our electronics capabilities, and Joshua Kendall helped ensure the team had the resources to pursue ambitious ideas. Beyond competition, Jaden Elliston and Divya Venkat Sridhar launched research into rechargeable battery technologies and new approaches to battery assembly, creating opportunities for members to engage in deeper engineering research and experimentation.

Seeing students transform Chem-E-Car into a space for innovation, mentorship, and technical exploration has been one of the accomplishments I am most proud of.

By the time we arrived at the 2026 AIChE Western Regional Conference, the atmosphere felt completely different. We had spent an entire year learning from our mistakes, refining our systems, and improving every aspect of the project. More importantly, we trusted one another.

When our car rolled onto the track for its final run, all we could do was watch and wait. Months of work all coming down to a 2-minute run. The car was off and running, moving slowly and steadily…

And then the car stopped.

I looked over at one of my closest friends, Adrian Smith, who had believed in the project from the beginning.

He looked back at me and yelled, "Yes!"

His voice cracked as he said it.

When Stanford was announced as the second-place team the following day, I found myself thinking back to that moment. I thought about the countless hours students had spent in the lab, the workshops they had volunteered to teach, and all the people who chose to keep showing up even when things didn't go according to plan.

Second year. Second place.

More importantly, a team built to last.

For most teams, a trophy is the goal. For me, second place was confirmation of something I already knew.

We had succeeded because we built a team that cared about one another.

As I prepare to graduate, what I am most proud of is not the car itself, but the community that formed around it. I'll especially remember my fellow graduating seniors Samantha Reising, Kunal Arora, Keira Cornwell, Adrian Smith, and Anthony Martinez Rosales — not just for their countless hours in the lab, but for their friendship, leadership, and belief in what this team could become.

Together with so many others, they helped create a space where anyone—regardless of experience—could learn, build, and grow as an engineer.

Chem-E-Car has always been about more than a competition. It reflects what makes Stanford Chemical Engineering special: students willing to tackle difficult problems together, learn from failure, and invest in one another's success.

The second-place trophy represents a milestone, but the community built around the team will have a much longer legacy.

With Jaden Elliston and Abigail Greenwell stepping into leadership next year, I know Stanford Chem-E-Car is in good hands, and I can't wait to see where they take it next.