Dozens of local high school students with a passion for artificial intelligence visited the University of Florida recently for the third annual Powering the Community: High School AI Design contest sponsored by Duke Energy.
Starting Oct. 3 and continuing for six and a half weeks, student teams completed six activities to develop and apply their understanding of power, microgrids and the use of AI tools to design a smart power grid system tailored to their communities. Top-placing teams from each school presented their proposals of a smart grid design strategy to a panel of judges from Duke Energy.
The Sparkitects from South Sumter High School in Bushnell won first place for designing a smart grid system that used calculus principles to optimize how emergency power could best meet demand in real-time.
“We worked very hard on this,” said Jayley Lewis, a senior at South Sumter. “It was very exciting that Sumter County did so well because we are very rural. Our design was different from everyone else’s, and I think that helped us stand out because we had different priorities and we were able to account for that.”
Design Showcase results
First Place
Team: The Sparkitects
Members: Jayley Lewis, Abigail Ortega, Jackson Thompson, Samiul Kader
School: South Sumter High School
Teacher: Stephanie Yarbrough
Second Place
Team: The Circuit Breakers
Members: Zachary Hershberger, Carter Smith, Gerardo Cardoso, Oscar Rubio-Flores
School: Wildwood High School
Teacher: Travis Childs
Third Place
Team: Brilliant Academic Learning Dominators (B.A.L.D.)
Members: Isaac Hilderbrand, Lily Congleton, Teddy Brown, Aidan Aylward
School: Belleview High School
Teacher: Dale Toney
The Powering the Community program is led by Nancy Ruzycki, Ph.D., instructional associate professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. Program managers Evan Dolling and Sophia Ahmed coordinate the contest’s curriculum and logistics, while UF undergraduate engineering mentors offer technical support and guidance.
“These students are learning about energy and all the concepts they need to be successful in engineering, and they are also learning what it means to be a successful engineering student at UF,” said Ruzycki.
The PTC contest has expanded since the program’s original launch in 2022 and the inception of the Design Showcase in 2023, with 21 high school student teams competing in this year’s contest. Judges include Duke senior engineers Gary Bitter, Ernie Moore and Chuck Collins, who praised the students’ creativity and technical insight. Participating schools included Belleview High School, Forest High School, West Port High School, P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, South Sumter High School, and Wildwood Middle High School.
“It was inspiring to see how everybody had different ideas and how we could build off each other and how this program has expanded over time,” said Lewis.
Ten team finalists presented at UF, representing the top student innovators from each district. Spring 2026 will see the third iteration of the annual PTC middle school contest, first initiated in 2024, which takes place virtually over the course of eight weeks.
Together, UF and Duke Energy are inspiring Florida’s next generation of engineers to power their communities, one idea at a time.