Bill Carstensen in Geography was invited by the Department of Mechanical Engineering to collaborate on the "DARPA Grand Challenge: Navigation of Autonomous Vehicles" program. The goal was to build an unmanned vehicle that could travel from outside of Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

The Geography team (below, from left to right) included grad student Sara Hyland, undergrad Thomas Bull (History), undergrad Jonathan Laird, and grad students Chris Stahl, Berkley Almeida, and Nova Shaffer. The Geography team provided navigational expertise using GIS and GPS.

Below is the entire student team, including those from Mechanical Engineering, working on the project.

Below is a map produced by Chris Stahl depicting elevation and other features related to navigation.