8th Annual Maker Faire Long Island

On September 14, 2025, the Seagull Solar Car team presented at the Long Island Maker Faire, hosted on Stony Brook's campus. There, we met new people with similar STEM-related passions, introduced the idea of sustainable, solar powered electrical vehicles, and inspired current and future generations to pursue careers in STEM.

More on our Maker Faire exhibit: https://longisland.makerfaire.com/maker/entry/1147/

The event — presented by the Long Island Explorium and hosted at Stony Brook University — started at 10 AM, and lasted until 5 PM. The sunny weather was perfect for our solar car and our miniature solar car.

We brought along our trailer, which, inside, had the chassis of our solar car from our last competition in 2023. As we displayed it, we encouraged people to take photos and sit inside the car to experience a small part of what our future driver will have to go through in our upcoming race.

One of our main missions is to spread STEM — especially sustainable, solar-powered engineering to youth as they are the next generation of innovators. To gather the interests of children attending the event, we brought our miniature solar car, a side project that was worked on during our last competition season. Many kids were very enthusiastic about being able to remotely drive the car as they sat inside while the car's battery was powered by sunlight.

Made by our team from our last competing season, this miniature solar car was very popular at the Maker Faire event, with some kids revisiting our exhibit to drive it again.

Seeing people across all ages being very enthusiastic and supportive of our mission, our creations, and our high school team furthered our excitement in competing this July in Dallas, Texas. We greatly appreciate all the generous people who donated to our cause and helped fund our team's transportation costs! Moreover, we are very thankful to everyone who visited our exhibit as we shared our goals, ideas, and plans for our upcoming race.