Hyperloop
HYPED is a student society at The University of Edinburgh leading R&D into Hyperloop, including the engineering of pods as part of SpaceX’s competition, and research and commercialisation efforts with Virgin Hyperloop.
As a member of HYPED, The University of Edinburgh Hyperloop Team, I had the opportunity to contribute to the research and development of Hyperloop technology.
For context, Hyperloop is a proposed transportation system which propels autonomous levitating pods through a near-vacuum tubeat speeds comparable to aircraft. The system would have the potential to shorten a journey such as Edinburgh to London to around 50 minutes. The HYPED team, which I was a member of, were leaders in the UK for Hyperloop development. And I contributed to the team through work on R&D, Sponsorship, STEM Outreach, and Design & Branding - more info below.
My experience with HYPED was an incredible opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology and collaborate with a talented team of individuals during my time at university. And I'm super proud of our team's accomplishments and the impact we made in researching and advancing such a novel technology.
Researcher | Commercial Team
As a Researcher in the Commercial Team, I worked on two major projects. The first project was focused on developing a proposal for the airport integration of Hyperloop as a means of addressing airport capacity constraints in South-East England.
The second project was researching and analysing Mobility as a Service and multimodal transport systems, identifying potential routes for Hyperloop's integration and commercialisation. This research eventually formed some of the initial market research and product discovery work for Vennle.
Our combined research and engineering efforts helped our team become leaders for Hyperloop in the UK. In 2017, HYPED was named as one of 10 winners of the Virgin Hyperloop One Global Challenge from some 2600 entries for our proposed Hyperloop UK route.
Head of Sponsorship
I led the team in raising funds for our R&D efforts so we could build pods to compete in the annual SpaceX competition.
We had over 25 amazing sponsors including The University of Edinburgh, Skyscanner, RS Components, Leonardo, and Cirrus Logic. All of whom were excellent in supporting our efforts across engineering, learning and development, and STEM outreach.
I worked with our sponsors and HYPED's internal teams to ensure funds were distributed in coordination with teams needs, and that sponsorship commitments, such as co-hosted events, team recruitment, and marketing were fulfilled and exceeded, resulting in excellent sponsor retention.
Over the course of two years we raised £300,000 of cash and in-kind sponsorship, which enabled the team to design and build Hyperloop pods to compete in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2017 and 2018, placing 6th out of 1000 teams worldwide as the top UK team.
£300,000
Value raised of cash and in-kind sponsorship over my two years at HYPED
Designer
In addition to my primary roles in Research and Sponsorship, I also contributed as a Designer on the Creative team. This involved working on the team's branding and design efforts, including our website and digital graphics; merch (mission patches, roller banners, business cards, etc.); and most-fun, the pods' liveries for the SpaceX competition.
