Senior leads new seaplane capstone project
Nyhel Sekulic, a double major in aerospace and systems engineering, is the team lead and project manager for Team 25011.
Faculty mentor Doug May (left) and alum Charlie Simpson recruit student team members at the 2024 Design Day open house.
First-time project sponsor Charlie Simpson is sponsoring the Preliminary Design Study for a Blended Wing Body Seaplane Interdisciplinary Capstone project, which will allow six engineering seniors to dip their toes into different aspects of aircraft design, from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and computer-aided design (CAD) models to wind tunnel samples.
The primary goal is to develop a long-range amphibious seaplane that can deploy divers and submersibles at sea, as well as support maritime surveillance and search and rescue capabilities.
Nyhel Sekulic is one of the six seniors who will work on the seaplane project this year. Originally from Paris, she followed in her father’s footsteps into aerospace engineering. The family moved to Tucson when her father began work as an engineer at the UA on the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope.
Sekulic, a double major in systems and aerospace engineering, said the seaplane project immediately caught her eye when she saw the list. After working in an on-campus lab for AME faculty members Christoph Hader and Hermann Fasel and getting hands-on experience with CFD data analysis, she discovered that it was “a passion I didn’t know I had,” so working on the seaplane project was a no-brainer.
Follow Team 25011's seaplane capstone project.