Mechanical Engineering student Elizabeth Parriott’13 and her team secured first place at Sikorsky Global Helicopters’ 7th Annual Research & Engineering Inter/Co-Op Summer Competition. The competition is voluntary and open to all interning students at Sikorsky branches. Elizabeth had competed for her branch two years ago and won the branch its first medal in the competition, bronze. Fueled off of this taste of victory she returned as team leader to win the gold.
As the competition is voluntary, Elizabeth spent the normal eight hour day analyzing and modeling mass distribution in helicopters. By night and early morning she and her team put together their Rapid-Extract Adaptable-Design Interiors (READI) system, which was designed to add costumer value to preexisting helicopters. The team went above and beyond as they put together a commercial, presented to Sikorsky executives, and constructed a detailed model of their system. The reward for first place this year was a half hour of flight training in an S300 helicopter, where the students were allowed to take full control of the air craft at an altitude of 2000 feet.