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Schools

El Cerrito High Grad In Solar Race in Australian Outback

Alice Che, who grew up El Cerrito and was valedictorian of the class of 2008 at El Cerrito High, is on the Stanford team vying to win a solar car race across Australia.

The valedictorian of the El Cerrito High School class of 2008 compiled an extraordinary academic record.

Alice Che had what the school yearbook called "a stunning GPA of 4.629 that includes 25 individual grades of A+." She took every AP and honors course offered at the school. Fluent in Mandarin and able to speak conversational Japanese, she volunteered six hours a week at Kaiser Hospital and performed with the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

And she was senior class president.

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Now Che is pursuing a very different kind of achievement. She belongs to a team of undergraduates at Stanford University who for the last two years have been designing and building a solar car in hopes of winning the World Solar Challenge, a grueling week-long race of nearly 2,000 miles across the inhospitable Australian Outback.

The team, which arrived in Australia at the end of last week, has focused their hopes and ingenuity on Xenith, a 375-pound aerodynamic solar car that will compete against other college teams in the race from Darwin to Adelaide Oct. 16-23.

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Che's role? She helped program the board that will send critical information to a chase car as it speeds behind Xenith.

“It will show how much power the solar car is consuming, its speed, how charged the battery pack is,” said Che, explaining that during the race, a lead car and a chase car accompany the solar car to act as buffers. She has also managed one of the blogs about their solar-powered creation. The team also has a main blog.

Che, who is working toward a degree in material science, said the experience she’s gained since becoming involved in Stanford’s Solar Car Project has been invaluable.

“It’s hands-on engineering experience that you don’t get anywhere until you go into the real world,” she said.

Che grew up in El Cerrito and attended and . When she was a student at she had a knack for science and enjoyed taking AP chemistry and AP biology. Part of the excitement, she said, was struggling through a problem and solving it. In her time at Stanford, she’s enjoyed her engineering classes the most. So when her best friends invited her to join the Solar Car Project, she didn’t think twice about rolling up her sleeves to help out.

“I definitely didn’t think I’d like it as much as I do,” said Che, who noted that she’s learned more about cars than she ever imagined – like how to build a 4-inch thin chassis for example.

The World Solar Challenge is a 3000-kilometer (1,864 miles) race held every two years that puts student-built solar cars to the ultimate test. This year’s competition will bring together 30 college teams from around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Netherlands, Iran and Turkey, to name a few. The Stanford team went a month to early to get the preparations underway and take Xenith on a test drive.

Xenith was on Aug. 11. The three-wheeled vehicle is powered by silicon solar panels fixed to the top of the car. Built of carbon fiber, titanium and aluminum, the vehicle can run continuously at more than 55 miles per her fueled by the sun. For back up, it is also equipped with a Panasonic lithium battery pack that will let it ride an extra 200 miles if clouds gather and block the sun. The $500,000 project was sponsored by Stanford, Volkswagen, Le Croy and more than 30 other companies.

Che explained that although solar cars will never be commercially viable – they generate a little more than a kilowatt of energy – there is much to learn from the technology that goes into building one. Being involved in the project has piqued Che’s interest in renewable energy.

“The gas or the fossil fuels, they’re not going to last and we need to find renewable sources of energy, and I think solar is the answer,” said Che, who is also did an intership this past summer researching solar cells.

In 2009, the Stanford team came in 10th of 25 entrants. Among the U.S. colleges participating in the race this year are UC Berkeley, MIT and the University of Michigan. Several members of the team, said Che, believe Stanford will reach the finish line faster than any one else.

“A lot of us think we can actually win this," she said. "We should win, hopefully we can."

Charles Burress contributed to this article.

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