2015 National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Photo Credit: CUR.org
A few days ago, Team UV was selected to present some of our research regarding our underwater vehicle and its propulsion system at the 2015 National Conference on Undergraduate Research, which will take place at the Eastern Washington University from April 16th-18th! Thank you to our readers for your support and for following our blog; we will not know what day, timeslot, or room we will be presenting on/during/in until early March.
Also, we want to thank those of you who have contributed to our fundraising campaign and mention that we have now raised $1,630 thanks to your generous donations! Thank you for your support and please continue to help spread the word as we continue in the purchasing and manufacturing stages!
We also want to note that no donation is too small and not a single penny donated will go to waste, it will all be used to increase the quality of our vehicle, to add capabilities (through additions to the sensor suite or additional drag-reducing technologies, etc.), and to enable us to conduct better testing (i.e. the construction of a flow tank for actual flow visualization). As an example of this, we are excited to inform you that through some of your donations we have been able to get our hands on a superhydrophobic substance (from Hydrobead) that will help us to decrease drag on the exterior of our vehicle significantly through the repulsion of the surrounding water. As follows from the above statements, any money that we raise above the $5,000 will be put directly into the project in one of many ways, including (but not limited to) those listed above.

Dyed water drops on wood coated with a super-hydrophobic substance. Photo Credit: TheFutureofThings.com
In addition to this, at this point, it is unclear as to where the funding to attend our research conference will come from (whether out of pocket or at least partially funded through our school’s research office), so all donations will help us significantly!
Lastly, I want to remind our readers that we will be trying to post funding progress updates as often as possible and that you can find a full-sized PDF of our pull-tag poster on our Sponsors & Donations page if you would like to print one out and post it to help get the word out. If you would like to help out in other ways, it would mean a lot to us if you would tell your friends/family/coworkers/etc. about our fundraising campaign (and possibly ask them to share it as well), share it on Facebook, or perhaps even just spread the word about TeamUV.org in general, as our biggest goal with regards to this website is to inspire interest in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Any help is greatly appreciated and please come back Sunday for Andrew’s Open Mind post!