{"id":5205,"date":"2026-05-13T15:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=5205"},"modified":"2026-08-12T07:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T11:51:15","slug":"ariel-wilcox","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/ariel-wilcox\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariel Wilcox"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"599\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Wilcox-Ariel-.jpg\" alt=\"by Corban Swain\" class=\"wp-image-5653\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1;object-fit:cover;width:200px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Wilcox-Ariel-.jpg 400w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Wilcox-Ariel--200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>North Carolina A&amp;T State University<\/strong><br>Faculty Advisor: Prof. Wesley Harris<br>Research Supervisor: Stewart Isaacs<br>Department: Aeronautics and Astronautics<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wilcox is an Honors Mechanical Engineering student with an Aerospace<br>concentration and a minor in Applied Mathematics at North Carolina Agricultural &amp; Technical<br>State University. She is from Woodbridge, VA, and is a Future of STEM Scholars&#8217; Initiative<br>(FOSSI) Scholar and a Tome Scholar. She completed a mechanical engineering co-op at<br>LyondellBasell, where her projects focused on flow-accelerated corrosion within the chemical<br>plant. Ariel has completed two leadership programs; Leadership in Engineers Acceleration<br>Program (Year 1) and the Global Engineering Leadership Program, which culminated in a<br>study abroad trip. She is an active leader in the SAE Aero Design team, contributing to<br>experimentation with flight configurations. Ariel&#8217;s research contributed to the effort to explore<br>the effects of wind-driven dust resuspension, where she designed and fabricated several<br>components of a wind-tunnel experiment, led the setup, verification, and take-down procedure,<br>and analyzed the resulting force data for trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br><strong>Fabrication Methods for Wind-tunnel Testing Solar Panel Analogs<br>Ariel Wilcox1,2, Stewart Isaacs2 and Wesley Harris2<\/strong><br>1Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Carolina Agricultural &amp; Technical<br>State University<br>2Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Solar power is a widely used, sustainable energy harvesting method. However, photovoltaic<br>(PV) panels, or solar panels, experience significant power loss due to a phenomenon called<br>dust soiling, where dust adheres to the solar panel&#8217;s surface. The overarching project seeks to<br>explore panel geometry to passively mitigate dust soiling. The primary objective of the MIT<br>Summer Research project is to enhance and expedite wind-tunnel testing procedures related to<br>dust soiling on solar panels. Here we show methods for developing components and protocols<br>to improve the testing capability of an existing wind-tunnel experiment. The test articles,<br>which were designed to imitate potential solar panel geometries, were refabricated using a hot<br>wire and a laser cutter, and assembled with epoxy. Custom attachments were developed for the<br>test article, eliminating an extra rotational degree of freedom. Three verification procedures<br>were implemented to ensure that the test article was aligned with the wind tunnel and all<br>measurement devices. These methods allowed us to complete over 60 trials across 13 test<br>orientations. The new testing materials and resulting datasets can be leveraged to inform future<br>dust soiling experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5406,"template":"","profile_category":[25],"class_list":["post-5205","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2026-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5777,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5205\/revisions\/5777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=5205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}