Infiniti Engineering Academy Offers a Ride to the Top
In the past, aspiring automotive engineers had to spend a minimum of four years at an accredited college or university obtaining their automotive engineering degree and then hope that their grades, projects, and interviewing skills were good enough to land them a job at either an auto maker or, if they were really lucky, a race team. Not anymore. These days programs like the Genius Garage and the Infiniti Engineering Academy are gaining traction in the automotive world and offering the best of the best a chance of a lifetime.
Program Participants Receive Unique Educational and Career Opportunity
Entry into the Infiniti Engineering Academy Program is highly competitive. This year’s program will offer seven students from seven regions a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from engineers from Infiniti and the Renault Sport Formula One team. Students from Asia and Oceana (Australia and environs), the United States, Mexico, the Middle East, Europe (including Russia), Canada and China are encouraged to apply for the program. Entries will be open from February of this year.
The 2014 winner of the Academy program was William Priest. As the program winner, Priest went on to become a full time engineer with Infiniti. Daniel Sanham, the 2015 winner, just signed a full time contract with the Renault Sport Formula one team. The first female winner, Caitlin Bunt, from the 2016 class, is still deciding where she wants to work.
Tommas Volpe, director of Infiniti Global Motorsport, said, “Thanks to our close Technical Partnership with the Renault Sport Formula One Team, we can offer seven engineers from all over the world a truly technically rich, multi-discipline and multi-cultural engineering placement. We are really proud to see this project growing year after year and our past Academy Engineers being so successful in their careers. The level of interest we are receiving from students all over the world is absolutely fantastic, so of course we are delighted to launch the fourth edition of this truly unique program today (at the Autosport International Show in Hong Kong).”
Managing director of the Renault Sport Formula One team Cyril Abiteboul had this to say about the program: “Infiniti brings two key elements to the Renault Sport Formula One Team – expertise in the Energy Recovers Systems (ERS) through Performance Hybrid technology, and an international diversity of young, fresh-thinking engineering talent, thanks to the Academy. These globally sourced students not only bring fresh perspectives to the team, but also the latest learnings from road car hybrid technology, of which Infiniti is a pioneer.”
Volpe added, “With Formula One more relevant to the automotive industry than ever and our Academy engineers at the cutting edge of both automotive and motorsport engineering, we are perfectly placed to explore, understand and encourage the crossover of technology between our two companies and disciplines.”