Design build teams
Aeronautics Team
The UMass Aeronautics Team is an undergraduate student competition team. We compete in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics: Design, Build, Fly (DBF) International Competition. The competition requires team’s to design, manufacture, and fly an optimized aircraft capable of performing commercial, welfare, and military missions. We apply our classroom knowledge to real-world problems in the aviation, UAV, and VTOL industries—join us for the chance to gain practical engineering experience and develop essential skills.
ChemE Car
ChemE car is an opportunity to apply what you have learned in class, get an excellent resume topic, and participate in a hands on project completely run by students. ChemE car gives you the freedom to design a model car based on any idea your group comes up with no experience required. The only requirement is that the car runs completely on a chemical energy source. 4-6 students spend roughly a semester and a half building a model car from scratch, ending with a multi-university competition. The project culminates with participating in the AiChE Regional ChemE Car Competition. Affiliated with AiChE.
- Affiliation: AiChE
- Website
Concrete Canoe
The UMass Amherst ASCE Concrete Canoe team has a long and storied history. The team is probably the most memorable team experience among ASCE alumni with the most common reasons being the difficulty, the camaraderie, and the accomplishment inherent in the event. The competition involves designing, mixing, casting, and racing a concrete canoe. Slight changes are made to the rules every year, but in general, canoes are judged on aesthetic appearance, weight, speed (via a timed race), and engineering design.
- Affiliation: ASCE
Engineers Without Borders UMass Amherst (EWB)
EWB UMass is a student organization of graduate and undergraduate students whose mission is:
- to improve the quality of life of disadvantaged communities by developing environmentally conscious, socially equitable, and economically sustainable engineering projects;
- to develop lasting and responsible relationships with the communities we work with; and
- to create opportunities for students to gain experience in community development, both locally and abroad.
Our group is responsible for the design, fundraising, construction, and implementation of each project. The idea is not to create a singular “solution” but to provide the tools necessary for the community to help themselves.
Minutemen Racing - Formula SAE®
Minutemen Racing - Formula SAE® is an internationally recognized student design competition that challenges university undergraduate and graduate students to conceive, design, fabricate, develop, and compete with small, formula-style vehicles. The competitions give teams the chance to demonstrate and prove both their creativity and engineering skills in comparison to teams from other universities around the world.
UMass Formula SAE is an undergraduate student organization that aims to foster a multi-year community for ambitious students across any major on our campus to collaborate, grow, and apply the theoretical knowledge that we are being taught in class to a real-world problem. We integrate aspects of project management, budgeting, collaboration (across our sub-teams and within our sub-teams), hoping not just to become better students, but to also to make our students better job/internship candidates.
HackUMass
Since its inception as an embedded system hackathon with only 100 participants in 2014, HackUMass has evolved from a basement gathering to one of the largest and most prominent hackathons in the Northeast. HackUMass receives 2,000+ applications annually and hosts over 900 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs who joined together to create over 100 hardware and software projects in 36 hours.
UMass iGEM
iGEM is an interdisciplinary student team that works together to tackle real-world issues through Synthetic Biology and Genetics, culminating in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Competition. No prior experience in synthetic biology or research is required to join the team, and iGEM is open to all majors—the only requirements are curiosity and a drive to make a difference outside the classroom.
UMass MedTech Team
If you're passionate about biomedical device design and seeking hands-on experience, join our MedTech Team! As a completely student-led initiative, we provide a platform for you to put your classroom skills into real-world applications, collaborate with like-minded peers, and work on designing and prototyping innovative devices. Together, we can shape the future of biomedical technology.
UMass Rocket Team
The UMass Amherst Rocket Team is a team of undergraduate students that work together to design, build, and launch high-powered rockets with experimental, data-collecting payloads. The team provides an opportunity for students across engineering disciplines to gain knowledge and hands-on experience with high powered rocketry. The team is composed of three subteams: Payload, Recovery, and Structures which all work together in achieving this goal. The UMass Rocket Team has historically taken on NASA's challenging Student Launch Initiative (SLI) competition and has traveled to Huntsville, Alabama to compete with teams across the country placing 8th in the 2025 competition year. The team continues to push the limits of student rocketry in exploring new design challenges each and every year.
UMass Robotics
UMass Robotics is a student-run organization that gives members the opportunity to dive deep into the cutting-edge field of robotics. Members will gain experience in computer programming, electronics, and hardware design. Each year, our team works to build a robot that will compete in an annual competition. This year, the the team will compete in the NASA Lunabotics competition by building a mining robot capable of digging through sand and gathering "precious material," similar to what a robot might do on Mars.
Seismic Design Team
Our Seismic Design team annually designs and builds a balsa wood scale model of a skyscraper for the EERI Seismic Design Competition. The structural restrictions change every year, but the competition involves designing a tower that can withstand three specified ground motions. The ground motions are often taken from actual earthquakes, so students get a brief history lesson as well! The competition also involves a written component, a formal oral presentation, a poster presentation, and aesthetic judging.
- Affiliation: ASCE
Steel Bridge Team
The Steel Bridge design team annually designs, fabricates, and constructs a bridge assembled out of individual, interlocking steel sections. At the Regional Competition, bridges must support a design load of 2500lbs. The bridges are then judged on aesthetics, lightness, stiffness, and constructability. The Steel Bridge team is concept- and design-intense in the fall semester, needing to finalize the bridge design before winter break so that the steel can be fabricated. In the spring, the team irons out the fastest way to construct the bridge and practices as often as possible!
- Affiliation: ASCE
UMass Supermileage Vehicle Team (SMV)
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UMass Supermileage Vehicle Team with their vehicle
The Supermileage Vehicle Team is referred to as the legacy design team of UMass, dating back to 1995. It began as a tech elective, and it wasn’t until 2022 where it transitioned from a class over to a club. Every April, SMV competes in an intercollegiate contest at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, known as the Shell Eco-Marathon. The program provides participants with the opportunity to enhance their engineering design and project management skills in a challenging competitive environment. The engineering design goal for the Shell Eco-Marathon is to design and manufacture a single person, fuel-efficient vehicle that complies with the competition rules. The vehicles will run a specified course to obtain the highest combined miles per gallon rating while increasing public awareness of fuel economy. Currently our goal is to reach 2000 mpg.