Excellence: The Fast and the Futurists

By Stephanie Hill

Tulsa, OK - ORU engineering students past, present and future are making a name for themselves, joining a group of prestigious university teams in a competition to design the Hyperloop, a futuristic form of ground-based transportation that propels a pod over 700 miles per hour.

The ORU team, called "Codex," recently returned from California where they were scored on their pod design.

“We are really excited to have the opportunity to create new technology and be on the cutting edge of transportation,” said team leader and ORU Senior Emily Dzurilla.

Billionaire Inventor Elon Musk and his company SpaceX are using this competition to develop the Hyperloop, intended (eventually) to carry people the 400 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes.

1200 teams competed last year, a number that was narrowed to just 27. ORU was the only Oklahoma team selected and joined others from such high-profile schools as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical University of Munich and Texas A&M.

Several ORU team members graduated in May, so new, current students stepped forward to join the project. Most of the 29-member team worked over the summer, nights, weekends and even during Christmas break.

“Pretty much everyone on the team is giving extra time to this," Dzurilla said. "It’s a big opportunity for the university and an opportunity for us to build our resumes.”

Team Codex is grateful to the ORU Alumni Foundation and the area businesses that helped fund their efforts thus far, but to get to the next level of competition, they will need others to step forward again, including more new students who are willing to dream up—and build—the high-speed transportation of the future.

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