Engineering, design and the power of ingenuity is leading one group of county high school students to compete with some of the greatest minds in STEM technology.

The Advanced Vehicle Technology Team of Eastern North Carolina, sponsored mainly by the Beaufort County Police Activities League (PAL), is gearing up for the 2015 Shell Eco-marathon, having already started designing its vehicle. Other sponsors include Lee Chevrolet of Washington, First South Bank and Lowes. Having competed in last year’s marathon, the team looks to improve, carrying over last year’s momentum, which saw the team make the 25 percent of teams that even made it onto the track, said Addie Randall, team mentor and mom to team members Camin and Jetsun Randall-Peangmeth.

Randall said the local team, made up of four local high school students — Jetsun and Camin Randall-Peangmeth, Beaufort County Early College High School sophomore Anna Eagleston and Domenic Correa, a student at Washington Montessori School — is part of an official Shell Eco-marathon team based at Dudley High School in Greensboro, championed by educator and program director Rick Lewis. Last year, after having connected with Lewis, the local team members were not only permitted but encouraged to join the team and completed a running vehicle in a kitchen workshop to make it to the event in Houston. At the event, the team not only made it through preliminary safety and technical inspections, but also ran its car for six out of the 10 required laps, and the team calculated its car as running 800 miles per gallon of fuel, said Camin Randall-Peangmeth.

Randall said next weekend, the team will have a unique chance to test its vehicle early at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research (NCCAR) test track in Garysburg, and the team will also be interviewed by UNC-TV North Carolina Weekend for an upcoming television program.

However, with the competition date scheduled for April 9 to April 12 in Detroit, the local team is struggling to have a new car design ready by January 23 and needs support, Randall said. The competition invites universities and high school teams to design, build and test ultra energy-efficient vehicles capable of 3,000 miles per gallon and is one of three annual events sponsored globally by Shell, with events in Europe and Asia, as well. Last year in Houston, over 430 teams from 50 countries competed in 2014. With a tight budget, the team has relied on innovation, having received lawn mower engines donated by Honda and mostly repurposed parts to build a vehicle powered by a fuel-injected engine converted to run on 100 percent ethanol, Randall said.

Camin Randall-Peangmeth spoke about his involvement with the team, as well as his interests in STEM, which he hopes will someday lead him into a career in STEM, he said.

“Since I’ve been young, my dad, being an architect, has always been interested in cars and engineering and building things,” Camin Randall-Peangmeth said. “Being brought into this is definitely great for me when deciding what I want to do when I grow up. I’ll probably go into something along the lines of engineering and design. Last year, we didn’t make it around the track. We got on the track, but we only made it around about six laps. This year, if we can get around all 10 laps, we will be happy — that’s our achievement we are looking for.”

Al Powell, director of PAL, said the organization has followed a theme of aviation, boating and different transportation concepts to get area students hooked on intellectual bait, stay in school, out of trouble and focus on science and technology classes. Jeremy Peangmeth, who will be sworn in as vice president of PAL, and Randall, a senior team leader with PAL, told Powell about the Shell Eco-marathon concept and after researching the program, thought it to be a good fit for PAL-sponsored STEM activities in the county, he said.

“We began talking about something very near and dear to Addie and her husband, Jeremy’s extra curricular activities—the advanced technology as part of the Shell Eco-marathon program. After doing research, it seemed to be an excellent concept of robotics and transportation. I’m looking for great things (from the team). One thing cool about this program is Jeremy has devised a strategy where he has eight or nine different components from engineering and research, who is going to build the steering mechanism, the transportation and fuel injection systems, modifying the engine, the chassis, the shell and there’s enough in it for each kid to be working in the same science ideology — research, development, critical thinking, problem solving, time management and project management — and all this comes together at the right time to make the project, to make how they visualize the car.”

For more information about the Shell Eco-marathon team, Beaufort County PAL or to donate to the team/organization, contact Addie Randall at 252-721-8822.