Rio Rancho hosts statewide student self-driving race car challenge

R4Creating turned its Rio Rancho campus into a proving ground for student-built artificial intelligence on Saturday, May 9, as high schoolers from across New Mexico brought self-driving race cars to the finish line after a 10-week academy program.

The statewide challenge capped the New Mexico Artificial Intelligence Academy’s latest training run, bringing together students from 10 high schools who had spent weeks building AI pilots capable of steering robotic cars on tracks they created at school. The result was more than a STEM contest. It was a public demonstration that local students can design, test and deploy working systems, not just hear about AI in theory.

The academy, founded in 2023, says its mission is to help New Mexican students use AI to solve problems in their own communities while also contributing to ethical AI discussions. Its Invitational Challenge is built around that idea, giving high school students a chance to create and race self-driving cars in a format that rewards coding, testing, iteration and teamwork.

George Gorospe, a co-founder of the academy and board co-vice president at R4Creating, used the event to promote a summer training program and push students toward deeper technical work. He is also listed by R4Creating as a NASA employee. His pitch reflects the larger workforce question behind the race cars: whether New Mexico can keep more students on a path from classroom robotics to paid internships, advanced training and eventually jobs in the state’s growing tech economy.

That pipeline is already taking shape. R4Creating said it reached 5,000 students with technology programming in 2025, and in early 2026 it was accepting internship applications for a January-to-April program designed to build a homegrown pipeline of innovators. A 2023 report said the nonprofit would be home to a STEAM Center of Excellence in Rio Rancho, a sign the city is becoming a regular stop for hands-on technical education.

The academy’s director, Ford Davis, has taught in New Mexico for more than 30 years, has worked in robotics since 2007 and helped lead an earlier AI robotics program. His background points to something broader than a one-day competition: an expanding local effort to connect students in Sandoval County and beyond with the skills employers actually value, from robotics and coding to problem-solving under pressure.

R4Creating has also become a bigger statewide convener, recently hosting a robotics competition that drew 21 teams and more than 100 students from 25 elementary and middle schools. In Rio Rancho, that makes the race cars part of a larger bet that the next generation of New Mexico AI talent can be trained, tested and retained close to home.