Egyptian Students Beat Stanford and Rank First Place in Aerospace Competition

Cairo University’s team of aerospace and engineering students at the Faculty of Engineering ranked first place in the first phase of the 2019 AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition, organized annually by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

This is the largest aerospace engineering students competition worldwide, with more than 140 prestigious universities participating including Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This is the first phase of the competition, which involves submitting a proposal of how the aerospace would be manufactured, with the final phase scheduled for mid-April 2019.

Every year, student teams design, fabricate, and demonstrate the flight capabilities of an electric powered aircraft to meet the specified mission assigned by the competition.

The goal is to create an aircraft with excellent flight handling qualities and practical and affordable manufacturing requirements as well as a high vehicle performance.

“This was a fierce and difficult competition as we competed with very prestigious universities around the world, and so to rank first place is an important achievement,” Ahmed Hisham told Egyptian Streets, a student part of Cairo University’s team.

“The field of aerospace engineering is also not very developed in Egypt and so this should encourage others in it to advance and grow.”

President of Cairo University Mohamed al-Khasht told Al Masry Al Youm that the university encourages students to participate in international competitions in order for Egyptian students to gain the opportunity to innovate and communicate with peers from other universities around world.