Fairmont State University to Host 2025 Northeast Aerial Drone Competition Championship: Dragonfly
Fairmont State University will serve as the proud host of the 2025 Northeast Aerial Drone Competition Championship, a premier four-day event set to take place at the Falcon Center from May 29 through June 1. Bringing together 120 top drone teams of middle and high school students from Maine to Kentucky, this event is the largest of its kind in the country and a celebration of innovation, engineering, and student achievement in STEM education.
Organized by the West Virginia Robotics Alliance, which is managed by the NASA Education Resource Center (ERC) team at the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) Facility, this year’s event will feature live drone competitions alongside exhibits and demonstrations related to NASA’s Dragonfly mission—a revolutionary rotorcraft lander designed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab to explore Saturn’s moon Titan.
“We are excited to once again host the nation’s largest drone competition for 120 teams of middle and high school students, here in North Central West Virginia,” said Dr. Todd Ensign, Program Manager of the ERC and Fairmont State faculty. “We are grateful to our numerous sponsors including Aurora Flight Sciences, who is leading the development of the next generation of personal aircraft.”
The event schedule is as follows:
May 29–30: Middle school competition
May 31–June 1: High school competition
Each day begins at 8:00 AM and concludes with matches and awards ceremonies.
A full schedule can be found on the WV Robotics Alliance website. All events will also be livestreamed on Twitch at twitch.tv/wvrobot.
Hosting this dynamic national competition reinforces Fairmont State University’s role as a hub for academic excellence, innovation, and community engagement, while highlighting its continued commitment to expanding STEM education throughout West Virginia and beyond. The event was made possible with support from the NASA IV&V ERC grant, managed by Dr. Deb Hemler, Interim Dean of the College of Science and Technology.
