ADL Design Challenge
An annual, on-site program where individuals come to San Francisco, form teams, and solve real UAV design problems together.
2026 admissions are now closed.
All participants for the 2026 cohort have been selected. Come back for the 2027 edition - applications will open in early 2027.
aero-design-lab@stanford.edu →About the Challenge
The ADL Design Challenge is an annual, intensive program hosted at Stanford’s Aerospace Design Lab in San Francisco. Individual participants - engineers, researchers, and graduate students - come together on site, form teams, and work side-by-side on real fixed-wing UAV design problems.
The challenge emphasizes the process of design: from mission definition through aerodynamic parametrization, AI-driven optimization, rapid prototyping, and finally flight validation. Participants leave with hands-on experience in the same computational tools and methods used in the aerospace industry.
Teams are formed on arrival - mixing backgrounds, institutions, and skill sets. You might work alongside a propulsion specialist from Munich, a controls engineer from Tokyo, or a CFD researcher from São Paulo. That cross-pollination of perspectives is the point.
Every edition takes place in San Francisco, hosted on site at Stanford. Past cohorts have tackled challenges ranging from high-endurance surveillance platforms to agile mapping UAVs - always with a focus on doing the engineering right, not just getting to an answer fast.
How It Works
Arrive & Form Teams
Participants arrive in San Francisco and are grouped into teams on site - mixing backgrounds, skills, and institutions for maximum impact.
Design & Optimize
Define mission requirements, parametrize the airframe, and use neural network surrogate models and optimization algorithms to find the best configuration.
Build & Validate
Rapid-prototype your design, integrate propulsion and avionics, then fly test missions - comparing real data back to your predictions.