ME senior, Lunabotics leader Velarde's authenticity and passion for collaboration drove Purdue experience
The Lunabotics team had already made history with Sofia Velarde as president: It won the Caterpillar Autonomy Award at the 2025 NASA Lunabotics Competition in Florida for the first time.
But there was still one round of competition left. If there was a time to try something unheard of in a Lunabotics robotic competition, it was now.
So the team set up its robot to run the entire 30-minute round without any aid from the team. The robot would have to navigate the maze, excavate a rock and deposit it in a designated zone.
The move was unique and risky: Most robots ran on a combination of code and a team’s guidance.
Without Velarde’s guidance and support from the beginning of the robot’s construction, the innovative step might never have been considered within a competition.
Velarde’s supportive nature brought the team to new heights. This leadership trait, among others, made Velarde an ideal candidate for the Purdue Engineering Fellows. She was honored as one of seven for the Class of 2026 in September 2025.
“Sofia has established herself as a well-rounded and motivated engineer, who has embodied the College of Engineering’s vision of being a student who is never complacent and always challenging herself,” director of student services and administrative programs and mentor to the Purdue Mechanical Engineering Ambassadors (PMEA) Brandon Boyd wrote in a nomination letter for Velarde, a senior in mechanical engineering from San Diego.
When Velarde received the honor — being considered one of the best of the best of Purdue Engineering and being supported through the generosity of Robert H. Buckman (BSChE ’59) and Joyce A. Mollerup — she called it “an ode to family, peers and mentors.”
In addition to a commemorative plaque, Fellows also receive $25,000 after graduation to support future endeavors, which can vary from paying for graduate school to traveling to Europe. Velarde plans to use some of the $25,000 gift to accomplish recent dreams: to obtain a pilot’s license and a scuba diving license.
From VIP to NASA
Velarde’s Purdue journey began with a tour.
Her tour guide was a mechanical engineering ambassador who enthusiastically answered her parents’ questions about dorms, making friends and balancing classes. It felt familiar to Velarde, who had been a tour guide in her all-girls high school. Now on the cusp of something new, Velarde’s primary question as she left that day was simple: “How can I become one of those?”
Velarde had the same thought after discovering Lunabotics during the B-Involved Fair in the fall of 2022. Even while still deciding which major to pursue and navigating first-year engineering (FYE) in West Lafayette, Velarde knew she wanted to be a part of Lunabotics, a student organization that has been designing, building and operating lunar robots to compete at the Kennedy Space Center for over a decade.
Lunabotics became a part of Velarde’s first-semester schedule when she joined the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) team for the org. There were 40 students, from first-year students to seniors, and Velarde was one of five first-year students who consistently showed up to meetings, networking events and research times in a workspace she affectionately called the “chicken coop,” tucked behind the Bechtel Design and Innovation Center.
Building an autonomous robot that would function in a simulated lunar arena was hard work. And it was awesome. Lunabotics was how Velarde wanted to spend her time at Purdue.
Velarde reminded herself of that when elected treasurer in May 2023 … and was handed the task of raising $15,000 for organizational expenses, from machine parts to traveling across the country for the weeklong NASA competition.
Fundraising turned out to be a lot more advertising and writing than Velarde had anticipated as an engineering student. But with an organization that reached across disciplines like Lunabotics — participants include students in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, earth and planetary sciences, and mechanical engineering — the exhaustive efforts paid off. Velarde’s team raised a record $20,000 for the 2023-24 academic year and secured two travel grants totaling $10,000 in the process.
By the time Velarde began giving tours with PMEA in fall 2023 and became president of Lunabotics in spring 2024, she was well-versed in the variety of challenges Purdue Engineering students could face and overcome.
“If you stand out in a room, take that as a compliment,” Velarde said of treading new paths in innovation. “You’re opening doors for others and paving a path, which can be really uncomfortable and sometimes scary. But everyone around you at Purdue is willing to help you. There is no one against you.”
As president of a competition-driven student organization, Velarde took responsibility to ensure the team was ready to compete seriously. That worked to the team’s advantage in 2025, when competition officials implemented an early fall submission to qualify for the Florida-based competition. Out of the 50 teams typically present, around 30 qualified with the new guidelines and submission deadline.
Purdue’s team was one. The preparation was rigorous. In the design reviews held throughout the semester, she directed the team to wear business casual attire and prepare to livestream design reviews for an audience of Purdue Lunabotics alums and industry partners to provide feedback.
One of the judges saw the videos before the competition and was wowed by the professionalism from a collegiate organization.
But being impressive wasn’t all Velarde wanted the team to do: She wanted to push the bounds of what was possible in competition with a team that was proud of its work. So in the final round of the Florida-based competition in 2025, Purdue Lunabotics let its robot run the 30-minute course with full autonomy.
The student org had been testing autonomy within its robots for years. But in a competition where most teams used full manual controls? Full autonomy was new and exciting, something the whole team could be proud of, which was one of Velarde’s principal goals.
The robot, which the team had spent a year developing, ultimately ran into a rock and became beached.
But Purdue Lunabotics walked away with a win anyway: the Caterpillar Autonomy Award.
The award, signaling first place in one of the challenge’s categories, recognized the team that demonstrated the strongest autonomous programming. Autonomy had been one of Purdue Lunabotics’ defining strengths in the design process — and ultimately became a strength in the NASA competition. It had never been just winning, according to Velarde, but about making advancements.
“Even though it cost us the run, both Caterpillar and NASA recognized the significance of the risks we took, not to guarantee a win, but to advance genuine engineering innovation,” Velarde said. “Seeing our team choose creativity and ambition over safety truly embodied what it means to be Purdue engineers driving change.”
Velarde’s innovation-first mentality has only enhanced Purdue’s engineering reputation, according to Lunabotics advisor and VIP lecturer Curtis Marshall: “She has set up the team for success in future years.”
Velarde incorporated each of her experiences, the highs of leading a growing club and the lows of experimentation going awry, into conversations with incoming students as an ME ambassador. Authenticity exuded from Velarde as she shared each facet of college life. The earnestness earned admiration from future Purdue Engineering students (who told Velarde so after enrolling at Purdue) and from Boyd.
“Sofia is a key member of the Purdue Mechanical Engineering Ambassadors and a problem solver in leading student outreach initiatives,” wrote Boyd, whom Velarde considers to be “a guiding light” as a mentor.
“She highlights not just the ME curriculum when speaking to prospective families, but her holistic experiences as a student within the College of Engineering.”
From sky to sea
How do tires need to be different to tread on the moon?
Velarde didn’t have an answer in 2023. But she had an internship at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, the company that produced the tires used on the Apollo 11 rover in 1969. So she was bound to find some answers as a lunar mobility vehicle intern over the summer.
“It was really cool being able to actively take part in the future of aerospace,” Velarde said. “While I’m not going directly into aero with the company I’m going to after graduation (Solar Turbines), it’s definitely something I want to do in the future. There’s always enough seats at the table, and when an opportunity does come to me, I want to be ready to take it.”
The internship included 3D modeling and prototyping lunar tires. She was tasked with producing a new test fixture and procedure in the midst of learning new software and concepts.
The internship also regularly involved getting dirty: Velarde changed tires, hauled logs, lifted infrastructure frames and hammered away to create, test and help.
“It was hard and dirty work, but she persisted with enthusiasm,” mentor and Goodyear engineer Chris Fenstermaker wrote. “I appreciated her persistence with her work and her self-drive to keep momentum going. … Her technical aptitude shone bright, and at the end of her internship, the project was a success. We are still using the test fixture she developed (and her) breakthrough in a facet of the tire building process.”
The summer excited Velarde so much about a future in what she called “lunar engineering” that she pursued a research position with the Resilient Extra-Terrestrial Habitat Institute (RETHi), housed at Purdue, in spring 2024. While still in FYE, Velarde dove into learning MATLAB and running over 500 hours of simulated lunar habitat distress cases — from meteorites to moonquakes — to aid in the institute’s three-fold research addressing system resilience, situational awareness and robotic maintenance in a variety of lunar conditions.
Velarde’s growth impressed RETHi mentor Luca Vaccino, who considered Velarde “a valued contributor whose insights I trust and respect” within technical research and communication.
“(Sofia) is exactly the kind of innovative, principles and forward-thinking engineer that Purdue should celebrate and support,” Vaccino wrote.
For a change of scenery after intense lunar focus, Velarde shifted to an underwater project for ME senior design. The team works with a dive master to make a smart “safety sausage” — a surface-marking buoy that indicates where a diver is surfacing, a sight that was common to Velarde while growing up on the beaches of San Diego.
Divers stop around 5 meters (16 feet) from the surface to allow their bodies to adjust to the different pressures, which prevents oxygen bubbles from forming in the bloodstream while the body decompresses. The buoy signals to the boat the diver’s location, and Velarde’s team is developing an electronic and fully waterproof version that can put out light and signal the Coast Guard for help when needed.
It’s different from lunar tires, but it has only affirmed that Velarde wants to explore engineering in multiple facets as a mechanical engineering graduate student in the future. In that same spirit, graduation will take Velarde from West Lafayette back home to San Diego to work for Solar Turbines, a subsidiary company of Caterpillar. Power generation is continuing to rise in importance, especially with the influx of generative artificial intelligence use and increasing accessibility of electric vehicles. Velarde anticipates using advancements in earthbound vehicles and tech to influence what goes into space.
For now, Velarde is enjoying her final semester at Purdue to the fullest: offering advice to incoming Lunabotics leaders, contributing to research projects and taking both wine tasting and beginner ballet.
It’s “the chillest semester” of recharge for Velarde, before she graduates and begins to make impactful contributions elsewhere, exemplifying all that Purdue can help a student to become.
“It’s because of the surroundings and the community that I have here at Purdue and from my family that got me here,” Velarde said. “(Engineering Fellows) was a great opportunity for me to step back and say thank you to those that helped me along the way and made it all worth it.”