Meet the Bloggers

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The UAB Baja Team is a group of UAB students from both engineering and non-engineering majors with one common goal: to build the best Baja car ever! The team has been in existence since 2002and continues to improve both its design as we head into the 2008 competitive season.

Meet the Bloggers:

Haley Rilling

Haley Rilling

I am Junior majoring in Mechanical Engineering at UAB. I come from a small town that is about three hours south of Birmingham called Brewton, AL (google it!). A little about me…I am kind of random, so much so that some of my friends call me “Shiny”…go figure. I love music, coffee (NOT STARBUCKS!), good Italian food, my VW bug and hanging out with my friends. When I first started at UAB, I was planning on majoring in Materials Engineering. After I became more involved in the engineering school and the Baja team, I decided that I enjoyed more of the classes where I could apply math rather than the chemistry. Being on the Baja team this year helped reinforce that point and so this semester I switched over the Mechanical Engineering department. This being my first year on the Baja, and with the little knowledge I knew about cars, I was very overwhelmed at first. After getting to know my way around the shop a little bit better, I became more comfortable and really started learning a lot. My duties on the team range from doing the nasty paper work to helping assemble the suspension.

Alex McConathy

Alex McConathy

I am Junior majoring in Mechanical Engineering at UAB. I am from Oak Grove AL. I joined the Baja team this year and due to previous mechanical experience in my Dad’s shop I am now the Captain. I joined Baja because I enjoy offroading on my four-wheeler and rock crawling in my jeep. I really thought it was awesome to see the design we put on paper come together and be built in about 6 months. I have learned a lot of the math and equations from classes I haven’t taken yet as they applied to the car.

Scott Mayfield

Scott Mayfield

I am Senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering at UAB. I am from Morris AL. I am a volunteer fire fighter and enjoy riding four-wheelers and motorcycles. I really enjoy any thing that goes fast and is dangerous. I joined the Baja team this year to apply some of the concepts from class and because I enjoy building the car. I am really looking forward to the jumps at competition.

Hilary Gilbert

Hilary Gilbert

I am a Senior in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at UAB. I am scheduled to graduate in December of 2008. I am from a very rural town called West Jefferson. A town where riding four-wheelers and going mud riding are what you do for fun. After watching the Baja being built last year, I became interested in the process and decided this year I wanted to be a member of the team. It has been a pretty amazing experience learning to work as a team to meet goals and deadlines that have arisen over time. Through the process of building the Baja car I have learned a lot about real world applications of knowledge learned through classes at UAB.

John-Michael “Ping” Walker

John-Michael “Ping” Walker

I am a senior in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at UAB. I am schedule to graduate in May of 2008. I was raised in a country town named Atmore on the southern line of Alabama. I wandered into the design lab two years ago and became interested in the SAE car projects that UAB participates in. I rebuilt and fixed an old Baja car numerous times and became deeply involved in the building process over the past two years. I have learned a great deal about the machining and fabrication process through the course of my experience and how those things must be taken into account while designing of any system.