Winning teams from across California will vie for top bragging rights at the MESA National Engineering Design Competition State Championship in San Jose this weekend.
This competition is the culmination of a year’s worth of learning, planning, designing, building and testing prototypes powered by coding for middle and high school teams all around the state. The winning teams will advance to nationals held in San Diego next month.
The top three middle and high school teams have already beat out hundreds of others during local, preliminary and regional competitions. Here are the winning student teams competing this weekend by region and school level:
Middle School
- North region
- Ist place: G.M. Walters Middle School, CSU East Bay MESA center
- Atri Birru, Aditya Misra, Akash Muthukumar
- 2nd place: Mendota Junior High School, CSU Fresno MESA center
- Fernando Rosales, Tatyana Criado, Claudia Larreynaga, Andre Gonzalez
- 3rd Place: Los Banos Junior High School, CSU Fresno MESA center
- Abel Jimez, Bradley Villagranan, Veronica Aguayo, Kathya Rodrigues
- Ist place: G.M. Walters Middle School, CSU East Bay MESA center
- South region
- 1st place: Costa Mesa Middle School, UC Irvine MESA center
- Ha Mi Nguyen, Grace Graham, Rihanna Rosas Garcia
- 2nd place: Cesar Chavez Middle School, UC Irvine MESA center
- Santiago Ramirez, Nancy Gonzalez, Phil Menjivar, Leilana Ceja
- 3rd place: Vista Verde Middle School, UC Riverside MESA center
- Isaac Calderon, Sean Ng, Austin Gonzalez
- 1st place: Costa Mesa Middle School, UC Irvine MESA center
- LA Metro/ Central Coast region
- 1st place (tie): Dodson Middle School, CSU Long Beach MESA center
- Christian Gloria, Isabella Gonzalez, Jhiliane Ibatuan, Noreen Ahmed
- 1st place (tie): Virgil Middle School, UCLA MESA center
- Muntaha Muntah, Amber Willis, Rilla Sorriano
- 3rd place, EC Middle School, USC MESA center
- Oscar Fernandez, Yesenia Gomez, Sergio Falcon, Jacob Lean
- 1st place (tie): Dodson Middle School, CSU Long Beach MESA center
High School
- North region
- 1st place: Santa Teresa High School, San Jose State MESA center
- James Kim, Erica Cao, Shreeya Saravanan
- 2nd place, Santa Teresa High School, San Jose State MESA center
- Riya Rajeevan, Ritika Samant, Shaylyn Tran
- 3rd place: Middle College High School, CSU East Bay center
- Sudinma Thapa, Emily Au
- 1st place: Santa Teresa High School, San Jose State MESA center
- South region
- 1st place: Helix High School, San Diego State MESA center
- Sonija Lam, Ian Kim, Nathan Christiana
- 2nd place: Rialto High School, UC Riverside MESA center
- Carlos de la Torre, Maria Renee Santos, Nicolas Orozco
- 3rd place: Imperial High School, Imperial Valley MESA center
- Arianna Alba, Elias Miramontes, Alexandra Garcia
- 1st place: Helix High School, San Diego State MESA center
- LA Metro/ Central Coast region
- 1st place: Odyssey STEM Academy, CSU Long Beach MESA center
- Douglas Rivas, Katie Felix, Saidie Felix
- 2nd place: Lennox Academy, USC MESA center
- Martha Santos, Valeria Hernandez, Karina Arevalo
- 3rd place: Alliance Judy Ivie Burton High School, CSULA MESA center
- Angel Cortez, Hugo Chillin, Jose Garcia, Noe Lopez
- 1st place: Odyssey STEM Academy, CSU Long Beach MESA center
For NEDC, student teams identify an individual or group in their community that experiences an inequity. Teams will employ human-centered design practices to engineer a solution and use a coding element as the main component of their design. They will align their projects to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in an effort that leads to “Designing for Equity Locally to Affect Sustainability Globally, the 2023-24 MESA USA NEDC theme.
All competing teams will submit a design proposal, create an academic poster, prepare a technical pitch, and present to their peers and industry representatives at a public symposium. The NEDC process and competition mirrors real world experience as an engineer, providing an invaluable experience for the MESA students.
Each MESA state has the privilege of hosting the MESA USA NEDC event in a two-year cycle. In 2024 and 2025, California will welcome ten MESA USA partner states. This is an opportunity to showcase California’s trailblazing approach to STEM and highlight the vast MESA support network of industry partners and alumni.
Congrats to all the teams for achieving so much already and good luck at states!