Mining student advises high school STEM team
University of Arizona mining engineering student Alex Zadro (second from right) celebrates winning the Endurance Award at the 2023 race day for SARSEF Racing the Sun with fellow members of The Thunder Sisters team.
University of Arizona mining engineering student Alex Zadro recently advised a team of high school students in the Racing the Sun program. Racing the Sun is a yearlong program that introduces Arizona high school students to STEM by having them design, build and race solar-powered go-karts.
The team, Rolling Thunder, won two awards at the 2025 RTS Race Day, held in April at the Musselman Honda Circuit in Tucson.
Zadro was part of an award-winning RTS team two years ago and stepped in to help Rolling Thunder implement their design’s speedometer. She helped guide and advise the team using her experience and code from her 2023 design, which was both helpful and rewarding.
“Getting to talk to them definitely brought me back to that time and being stressed out. But as long as you have your group of people and just a little bit of resources, you can figure it out. And they did,” said Zadro