Five Righetti High School students were winners of the Innovate Award at Cal Poly Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Design Challenge and Leadership Conference, Feb. 21.

Event competitors were tasked with choosing a real-world engineering achievement to modify to address a real challenge in their community.

Isabella Yancey, a senior, along with sophomores Leah Maldonado, Henry Martinez-Cervantes, Valeria Hernandez and Roselyn Hernandez decided to address a common cause of California wildfires — power lines.

Building off MIT’s work with Tesla coils, the students created their own prototype of a wireless power generator using resonant inductive coupling, and successfully provided wireless electricity to two model houses.

“These students put in a huge amount of work on this project, and it’s been so impressive to watch them collaboratively grow as they applied real engineering thinking to solve a problem. Their creativity and teamwork absolutely shined through,” said teacher Brenda Anberg.

“Attending this conference was an incredibly enriching experience, and I loved collaborating with schools from across California,” Yancey said. “I’m so proud of my club members for their hard work, and I’m thrilled that we were able to bring home an award in our very first year attending.”

“Being part of SWENext is valuable to me not just for competing and sharing our knowledge through projects but also for working and connecting with my teammates,” said Roselyn Hernandez.

“Presenting our project pushed me out of my comfort zone and showed me I’m much more capable than I thought,” Maldonado said.

“It was so amazing to see so many talented women showing their engineering capabilities,” said Martinez-Cervantes. “This project helped expose me to the many different careers that relate to engineering.”