Archbishop Stepinac High School has been selected as one of just 60 winning teams nationwide in the prestigious 2025 – 2026 NASA TechRise Future Engineer Challenge, earning national recognition for student innovation in science and technology.
The NASA TechRise Future Engineer Challenge is a highly competitive program designed to give students hands-on experience in engineering, computing, electronics, and related STEM fields—skills critical to building America’s future technical workforce. The challenge tasks student teams with developing an original science or technology experiment to be launched aboard one of NASA TechRise’s flight vehicles: a suborbital spaceship offering approximately three minutes of microgravity or a high-altitude balloon reaching between 70,000 and 95,000 feet.
Stepinac students elected to design an experiment for a high-altitude balloon flight, titled Comparing the Ozone and Nitrogen Dioxides in the Stratosphere and Troposphere Over Time (CONOSTOT). The project focuses on analyzing atmospheric data at varying altitudes to better understand changes in key gases over time, offering valuable insight into Earth’s atmospheric conditions.
The student team includes:
· Joseph Alex ’29 of Yonkers
· Xavi Gonzalez ’29 of Yonkers
· Matthew Kulapurathazhe ’29 of Yonkers
· Anthony MacDonald ’29 of Yonkers
· Julian Reiff ’29 of Stamford
“Working on CONOSTOT has been so amazing! I never thought I’d get to do a real experiment that could go to the edge of space,” said Xavi Gonzalez ’29. “It’s been awesome learning with my team and seeing how our ideas come together.”
Their collaborative work and scientific curiosity led to their selection as a winning team. The project is moderated by faculty members Dr. Samantha Asche-Godin and Mr. Alex Estrella ‘15, who guided students throughout the proposal and development process.
“It has been incredible to see these students take their curiosity and turn it into something that could have a real impact on how we understand our atmosphere,” said Dr. Samantha Asche-Godin. “Their dedication, teamwork, and creativity truly set them apart.”
Mrs. Patricia Murphy, Chairperson of Computer Science Engineering Department, added, “Stepinac students continue to demonstrate what makes this school special: a commitment to excellence, innovation, and exploring new frontiers in learning. We are thrilled to see them recognized by NASA for their hard work.”
As a winning team, Stepinac will receive a comprehensive prize package that includes $1,500 to build the experiment, a starter kit with a flight box, and a guaranteed placement for their experiment aboard a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon flight. The team will also benefit from technical support and weekly meetings with Future Engineers experts throughout the experiment build period.
This achievement underscores Stepinac High School’s continued commitment to academic excellence, innovation, and providing students with transformative opportunities in STEM education.