10/27/25 - 11/2/25: Catalyzer Final Call! / Guest Lecturer - James Shaw / Mitsubishi Meeting / Data Acquisition Lead Highlight
Anton Walvoord
Catalyzer Final Call!
Hello
Formula! We are incredibly excited to announce that we have hit and
surpassed our stretch goal of $10,000!! We have currently raised $15,930
and have 6 Hours remaining in our campaign! Our page will be closing tonight at midnight CST.
We are so grateful to everyone who has donated and shared our page, it
has made a massive difference to us and the car we are able to build.
With that in mind, there are still a few hours left to donate and share
if you haven't yet! Our page is giving.nu/NFR26 and there's still some time!
The
support we've received over the course of our campaign will allow us to
push our team even further and manufacture more ambitious designs, less
burdened by financial restrictions. We have several projects beginning
manufacturing and this makes a world of difference!
Guest Lecturer - James Shaw:
The team was incredibly lucky to have SAE Industrial Lecturer James Shaw join us at our general meeting yesterday to talk about simulations!
James covered key topics including:
- How FEA (structural) and CFD (fluid and thermal) simulations work
- How to set up realistic simulations
- How to validate your results and determine if they’re reasonable
- And much more on simulation best practices
As many of you know, simulations are crucial both to our design process and to real-world engineering. With limited physical testing time, they help us get as close as possible to a final validated design before we even hit the track. James Shaw is an FSAE Design Judge who reviews our Structural Equivalency Spreadsheet (SES) each year, and he brings extensive experience from the aerospace industry.
James Shaw and select lecture attendees
James spent around 3 hours with the team, going in depth about simulation software and the math behind it. Members were able to ask detailed questions about how to choose simulation methods and settings. We are so excited to see this new knowledge put to use on our team!
Mitsubishi Meeting:
NFR
is once again working with Mitsubishi to provide us with machining
parts! This past week we had the pleasure of meeting with Brian Pond to
discuss which parts worked well last year and what we need a greater
supply of.
Anton, Brian Pond, and Benji (left to right)
Brian
also brought the team a few gifts of his own, including a DIAEDGE hat
and a model racecar! We are now finalizing our list of products that we
are requesting and look forward to continuing to work with Mitsubishi!
Data Acquisition Lead Highlight:
Our very first electrical lead highlight -- Ryan Boyle!
Ryan is a senior from Seattle, Washington studying Computer Engineering and Computer Science in the BS/MS program. He joined the Criticals Subteam his sophomore year, designing the E-Throttle Controller before moving to the Drivetrain Electronics Subteam last year to work on the Electronic Control Unit. In his free time, he enjoys windsurfing, playing the saxophone, and watching early 2000s sitcoms.
Ryan is in charge of the Data Acquisition subteam, placing sensors and driver feedback throughout the car. Notably he's in charge of the dashboard which will be highly utilized during debugging and configuration! The team is very excited to use the data his team gathers to improve our designs for next year.