Students Advance to Finals in Prestigious Engineering Competition

Oral Roberts University (ORU) engineering students will advance to compete in the finals of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. The eight-person team, known as Team Codex, is one of only 30 teams from around the globe that were selected to advance to the finals after presenting to SpaceX engineers and engineering faculty. The final competition will be held in June.

The Hyperloop is a high-speed transportation system proposed by Elon Musk that would link Los Angeles and San Francisco with a 30-minute travel time. A pod would travel at about 760 mph down a vacuumed-out tube.

“This is an outstanding achievement for Team Codex,” said ORU Engineering Professor and Team Codex faculty advisor Robert Leland. “They were selected along with teams of 30-70 students from major research universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of California, Berkeley, and teams from Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. The students have worked long hours on the analysis, design and testing needed to produce a winning pod. I have incredible students and am constantly amazed at what they can do.”

Members of Team Codex include Brandon Braun, Justice Boisselle, Jessica Fuentes, David Lopez, Alberto Troche, Gary Barnett, Luke Waite and Ben Russell. They have now been joined by a business team including Rachel Seldenrust and Adison Maddox.

The students must now build and test their Hyperloop design for the final competition. The team estimates they need about 100,000 dollars to complete construction and testing of their pod.

To donate to this project, visit /give/, select Where ORU Needs Most, enter an amount, and on the next screen write Hyperloop in the Additional Comments box.

For more information about Team Codex, please contact codexboard@gmail.com.

For more information about ORU’s engineering degree program, visit /academics/cose/engineering-major.php