CITRIS Aviation Prize Delivers Connections, Prizes

What would it take to connect the University of California's campuses in Merced, Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz with a safe and sustainable system of air taxis that ferries students, faculty, staff and cargo across Northern California?

That's the question posed by the 2023-24 CITRIS Aviation Prize, the student design competition organized by CITRIS Aviation, a research initiative of the multicampus, interdisciplinary Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at the University of California.

The contest reached its greatest heights this spring, when the four top-scoring teams from the first phase of the competition presented their final proposals to a panel of academic and industry judges at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View during a NASA-UC urban air mobility technical summit.

Jayro Ortiz-Ayala, one of six undergraduates on UC Merced's seven-person team, particularly appreciated the connections he made, from faculty on his home campus to the judges of the final presentations.

"When the competition was coming to a close, we got to meet many people at CITRIS, Joby (Aviation), NASA and other industry partners," Ortiz-Ayala said. "This, above all, is what the point is for us: working together to create a better tomorrow."

Read more about the competition at the CITRIS website.