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News 12 Staff

1018spotlightnj2_2025-10-18-09-19-29

STEM is something I find extremely fascinating and especially when you have female engineers. Alina Zara is president of the Rutgers solar car. We were talking about the car you built and your first competition. How did that go? So our first competition was actually a great experience for all of us. So how competition works is that the 1st 3 days you'll. Get your car scrutineered and it's this really intense process where they make sure that you pass all of these stations that they've set up to make sure that your car is safe because these cars do um end up sometimes blowing up or are causing crashes um so they have to make sure that your car is completely safe before they let you race um there will be around 40 to 60 teams from all across North America that will end. For this competition, but after scrutineering only about 10 to 15 of them, um, make it onto the track and actually get to race. So as a first time team we weren't really in the hopes of making it to the track, but when we got there we realized that the three biggest checkpoints, which is the mechanical checkpoint, electrical checkpoint, and your aerodynamics checkpoint, which is just your body and sizing, um, we were really close to passing all three. We passed electrical, we passed aerodynamics, and we missed mechanical by only 1 or 2 things. So seeing the finish line so close being only one or two days of work away from getting the car onto the track as a first time team was a big motivator for us to come back, um, set it full gear, and, um, be completely prepared to get on the track for sure FSGP 2026. You said as a first time team, what was that whole experience like in bonding. Seeing what went down on that track. So in terms of bonding, I think it was definitely an eye opening experience. Um, it was, so the entire trip took us around 10 days. Um, we drove 14 hours to get to, um, Bowling Green, Kentucky. The competition was at Bowling Green, Kentucky this year and, um, as you can imagine mid July the temperatures were high, um, and getting the car up. Running passing scrutineering going back again and again to scrutineers, um, we were pulling all nighters we were pulling all lights from multiple nights um we were bonding to a next level, um, but I think everybody had a lot of fun. We learned a lot we got to learn a lot about each other we had some great times and just it was just an environment of having so many teams there that were just so passionate about solar racing. And engineering seeing people from different backgrounds, different countries come together with just one mission in mind to advance the future of solar racing and solar cars and solar EVs in general was just so cool and so wonderful to experience and I think it gave us the motivation to kind of go back and give it our all and just make it to competition, make it to the next competition after that and just send it full gear.

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1018spotlightnj3_2025-10-18-12-20-45

My guest is Alina Zara. She is the president of the Rutgers Solar Car. It's a club on campus that deals with solar racing. How did you get into engineering and this kind of racing? So actually um it's a pretty interesting story. I wasn't planning on being an engineer one bit. I thought it wasn't something that I could do. I thought it was just a lot of math. It didn't involve creativity um and as a very creative person I wanted to go into some. Um, field that involved art in some way, so my plan was to go into architecture, but because of just like tuition money and wanting to stay close to home, I applied half to schools with mechanical engineering in mind and half to architecture, and I ended up getting a full ride to Rutgers and I'd applied to Rutgers as mechanical engineering because at the time it wasn't accredited for architecture. So as I began my journey. Engineering, um, I was in my mind I was like, no, I'm gonna transfer out as soon as possible and go straight to architecture, um, but obviously in your first two years you have to, you have to explore extracurriculars. It's not just about coursework. Um, I started getting into a club about, um, rocket propulsion, um, RRPL. It's a club at Rutgers that deals with you said rocket propulsion rocket propulsion, make sure I heard that right. And it was, it was a great experience, um, that made me kind of realize that I kind of liked where this was going. I liked this new turn that my life was taking from there I got involved into robotics research under Professor Moo at Rutgers, and um I ended up working under this PhD student, Noah Harmats, and we were working on this, um, 3 degree of freedom tendon driven robot. I ended up doing a lot of work under him for 2 years over um a summer putting in around like 50 hours a week and we ended up. Publishing a paper that got presented in Yokohama, Japan recently in the 2024, um, IEEE ICR conference. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. So seeing my work out there, seeing like, um, what I could contribute, how I can motivate other people just really kind of solidified the path that I was taking, um, really kind of made me believe in myself that engineering was a path that I could take that it was something that I could do was capable of doing from there, um, my friend dragged me to Rucker solar car. They were like, let's go to an interest meeting um in 2022. I was a sophomore and I started out as part of the mechanical team. I started doing um tasks for the steering team and from there I got more involved into the break up team. From there through my involvement, I became brakes lead. I designed a hydraulic I designed and manufactured with um help from other team members obviously um designed a hydraulic braking system for our first car. And then from there I also started to reach out to industry because I was like this this is something that we're doing and it's really cool and I think other people should get to know about it so I started to reach out to industry um we started getting a lot of sponsorship acquisition and through my involvement in the administrative side of things I also um got to pick. Came business lead for worker solar car, so I was brakes lead business lead simultaneously and then from there I felt like I had the technical background as well as the administrative background to kind of lead this team as club president. I ran the following year and since March 2025 I've been the president.

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President Alina Zahra joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss the group. 

Spotlight New Jersey: Rutgers Solar Car

President Alina Zahra joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss the group.

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