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“VitaVroom,” the latest incarnation of student-designed, chemically-powered shoebox sized-vehicles from ��������’s Grove School of Engineering, placed fourth at AIChE's annual Chem-E-Car Competition® in San Diego, California, from a field of 51 foreign and domestic entries.

The result maintains the Grove School’s reputation as a top performer in the international event. Student teams qualify for the finals by excelling in regional competitions.

VitaVroom secured CCNY’s trip to the finals –- held at the San Diego Convention Center -- with a top four finish at the AIChE Mid-Atlantic regionals in Maryland last spring.

The objective of the Chem-E-Car competition is for students to build a car that runs and stops at a precise distance via two distinct chemical reactions. The target distance this year was 26.62-meters.

VitaVroom stopped 31.8 centimeters from the target distance. Cornell University’s entry “Under Pressure” won by reaching within 12.4 cm of the target, followed by Brazil’s Centro Universitário FEI (15.2 cm), and the Greek-based National Technical University of Athens (19.3 cm). China’s Nanjing University of Science and Technology (45.2 cm) was fifth.

The CCNY team members (all chemical engineering majors unless indicated) were:

•    Luna Silva (junior);
•    Daniel Steininger (senior);
•    Shaedil Dider (electrical engineering, junior);
•    Joseph Castañeda (senior);
•    Maty Gueye (senior); and
•    Diacke Sokhna (senior).

Grove School chemical engineering professor Raymond Tu was the faculty advisor.  “I couldn’t be more proud of this year’s Chem-E-Car team. They worked together day and night to put together a world-class car and compete for the first time since the pandemic,” he said. 

In CCNY's previous trips to the Chem-E-Car Competition® in the last decade, “Manganese Prime,” also placed fourth in 2019; “Zincotron” was third in 2018 and won the Spirit of Competition Award in Pittsburgh. There was also a second place finish in 2013 with “REAKTER,” and Spirit of Competition awards in 2014 with “Grover,” 2015 with “RuSTi,” in 2016 with “Iodonator” and in 2017 with “Sulfurious.”