The IEEE Club at CMU is about hands-on engineering, innovation and community. We bring together students from every major who are into robotics, embedded systems, coding, circuits and research, and we give members real project experience outside the classroom through workshops, competitions and our work with the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. You don’t need experience, just curiosity.
As president I organize meetings, plan workshops, coordinate trips and outreach events, and lead the club’s technical projects. Balancing that with my own engineering work has been a good way to build experience beyond the technical side.
Soldering workshops
We run hands-on soldering workshops to teach students how to solder, from first joints through working on real boards. Several of us run the tables and help people one on one.
Build nights
Members work on the club’s robots and electronics in the lab, with soldering stations, meters and parts on hand.
How we run a club build
The project is split into mechanical, electrical, software, documentation and outreach subteams. At kickoff, members choose the work they are most interested in, each group sketches a preliminary design or block diagram, and then we review the integration points together. That catches dependencies early, such as settling the chassis and sensor mounting before wiring is locked down.
For the 2025–26 rover cycle we worked toward a formal design review in weekly checkpoints: concept and role selection, subsystem feasibility, a first bill of materials, early prototypes, a system-level diagram, then a mock presentation and final test pass. Workshop nights doubled as skill-building sessions and build time, starting with soldering kits and robotics kits. The goal was not just to finish one robot, but to leave a process that new members can join and understand.
Projects
The COSGC rover is the project that brought most of the team together. We presented it at the 2025 challenge, where I was the team’s lead presenter, and won Best in Class in the under 1.5 kg category. The club’s robots since then are on the COSGC Autonomous Tank page.
Competitions and trips
One of the club’s trips is the Colorado Space Grant Consortium robotics challenge in the sand dunes. In April 2026 it came with an Outstanding Performance: Navigation certificate from NASA and COSGC, and the team made the trip together.
The build is written up on the COSGC Autonomous Tank page.
Get involved
- Come to a meeting: we met Mondays at 3 PM in CH 110 in fall 2025.
- Join the list: email me through the contact page to be added to the club email chain and Microsoft Teams.
- Workshops: watch for sign-ups for soldering and Arduino nights.
- Follow along: event highlights are on Instagram at @cmu_ieee.