Terps Racing — TR26

Terps Racing is the University of Maryland's Formula SAE program — one of the most competitive collegiate engineering environments in the world, drawing nearly 140 teams from universities globally to Michigan International Speedway each year. The 2025–26 season was defined by TR26, one of the only fully autonomous active aerodynamics cars in FSAE history. As a member of the leadership team managing over 150 students, I held the Business & Operations function — a role I built from the ground up, as no formal equivalent had existed within the program before.

My work sat at the intersection of organizational strategy and technical fluency. I built and led a dedicated subteam responsible for the team's external communications, sponsorship pipeline, competition documentation, and social media presence, while managing an annual operating budget of $75,000–$100,000 and a partner network spanning defense primes, aerospace firms, and institutional grant organizations. The team's season culminated in its strongest result in two decades — 9th in the nation, 11th in the world.

What set this role apart was the ability to operate in both directions without losing precision. I could sit with the aerodynamics lead, understand why the three-state center-of-pressure architecture was a fundamentally different claim than a binary FSM, and write competition documentation that reflected that distinction accurately. I could then take the same technical story and frame it as a sponsorship narrative that resonated with a CFO at Northrop Grumman. Bridging that gap — not supporting engineering from the outside, but engaging with it directly — is the function I built and the skill I consider most valuable from this season.