Edgerton Center Clubs & Teams Showcase Dazzles & Delights

Members of the MIT Wind Team dressed in blue T-shirts chat with visitors, one of whom holds up a component part

Lobby 13 Lights Up with Student Innovation

Jamie Chelel

April 10, 2026

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On a drizzly Tuesday afternoon in April, Lobby 13 was transformed from a quiet brutalist entryway to a buzzing hub of excitement as MIT students, staff, and supporters gathered. Eighteen student-led engineering clubs and teams filled the space with artifacts and documentation of their work. The array included not one, but two race cars (Motorsports), several aircraft (Design Build Fly), one motorized shopping cart-turned-vehicle (MITERS), and parked right outside, a nearly complete two-passenger solar-powered car (Solar Electric Vehicle Team). The occasion was the Edgerton Center’s Annual Clubs & Teams Showcase, a celebration of outstanding (and sometimes outlandish) extracurricular accomplishments in engineering.

Alison Soong, a third-year undergraduate studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and co-director of the Assistive Technology Club who emceed the event, spoke to the Center’s underlying ethos of experiential learning: “Whether building race cars, rockets, sustainable engines, or assistive devices, Edgerton teams go beyond textbooks and problem sets to tackle real, complex problems. This learn-by-doing philosophy is truly what defines the Edgerton Center.”

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“Whether building race cars, rockets, sustainable engines, or assistive devices, Edgerton teams go beyond textbooks and problem sets to tackle real, complex problems. This learn-by-doing philosophy is truly what defines the Edgerton Center.”

Alison Soong

Co-director, MIT Assistive Technology Club

This year’s showcase brought together 18 of the Center’s 23 active clubs and teams, including some of the most recently-formed: Satellite Team, Wind Team, and Sustainable Engine Team. Displays featured working models, component parts, video documentation, and future plans. Each of these represented countless hours of design, testing, and refinement.

Visitors marveled at demonstrations ranging from how bodies interact with radio waves (Radio Society W1MX), to live readings from sensors destined for rockets (Rocket Team). They were delighted as students explained their spider-shaped robots that respond to body language (Human Technology Integration Club), robo-boats (Arcturus), and autonomous vehicles (Driverless). Crowds were dazzled by champion battle bots (Combat Robotics Club), and life-size components of Wall-E (RoboTeam). Some lucky guests even got to sit in the race car.

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More remarkable than the projects, though, are the people who collaborate to build them. As Soong noted in her remarks, “Behind every project is a story of unexpected challenges, creative solutions, and skills developed through experience.” The Clubs & Teams Showcase is a special opportunity for supporters of the Edgerton Center to chat one-on-one with these extraordinary students.

Through those conversations, visitors heard first-hand about the technical skills, creativity, and resilience that each student brings to their group. They also heard about the incredible power of collaboration, and using one’s individual talents to contribute to a larger, often very cool goal. Some of these goals include building a competition-ready robot in 72 hours (FIRSTxMIT), achieving full campus decarbonization (Geo@MIT), and riding bicycles across the continental United States to teach STEM in communities along the way (SPOKES).

Part of the magic of Edgerton Center clubs and teams is that they bring students with diverse interests from across the Institute together to create things greater than any one individual could accomplish. On collaboration, Soong reflected, “That’s what makes the Edgerton Center so special - and what makes me so proud to be part of this community. None of this would be possible without the people who make it what it is.”

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As these exceptional young people packed away their displays, conversations turned to upcoming competitions, next-level design ambitions, and the incoming students who will bring their own skills to each team. While clubs and teams look toward the future, one thing is certain: the Edgerton Center will continue to support their tremendous work. It will also warmly welcome them back to visit the Annual Showcase once they’ve taken the skills sharpened at the Edgerton Center far beyond MIT.