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Sofie Roux

@sofie.roux

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Stanford + @sparkly.and.smart
Founder of BloomBox Design Labs

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VOTE for David as Cox Conserves Hero Adult Finalist and Brandon as an Under 18 Youth Hero. See Link in Bio! The award will go towards new equipment to keep our repurposing program at PPP going so nonprofits like Brandon’s Recap Project and our many liaisons with schools, universities, artists, sustainable businesses & civic orgs can continue to upcycle more plastic waste♻️💗🌎#repurpose #sustainability #environment #hero #education

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Here’s the wonderful Project Earth story Molly McCrea created with Anne Makovec of KPIX about PPP & BloomBox Design Labs! #sustainability #earth #news #design #environment

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@stanfordsolarcar episode live NOW 👀🎙️link in bio OR watch in YouTube

Comment “SOLAR” and I’II DM you the full conversation.

Today’s episode features Sofie Roux and Rachel Grant, two engineers and leaders from the Stanford Solar Car Project, a student-led team designing, building, and racing solar-powered vehicles. From optimizing solar arrays and rebuilding mechanical systems to surviving all-nighters at the racetrack, they’re doing engineering at a level that goes far beyond the classroom.

Sofie is the Solar Array Lead for Stanford Solar Car and the founder of Bloombox Design Labs, an organization transforming shipping containers into solar-powered STEAM classrooms in Malawi. Rachel served as a Mechanical Co-Lead, worked on Starship’s propulsion system at Space, and now researches the extreme conditions spacecraft experience during reentry.

We talk about:
- What it actually takes to design and race a solar-powered car
- How solar, mechanical, electrical, and aerodynamic systems all work together
- Rebuilding a team after years of lost institutional knowledge
- The chaos of competition, all-nighters, and troubleshooting under pressure
- How Sofie founded Bloombox Design Labs at just sixteen
- Rachel’s path from collegiate volleyball and biomechanics to SpaceX and aerospace research 00
- Why failure is one of the most important parts of becoming an engineer
This episode is such an honest look at what ambitious engineering projects actually demand. It’s technical, exhausting, collaborative, unpredictable, and filled with the kind of friendships that can only form while building something together at 3 a.m.

They’re not just building solar cars. They’re building resilience, confidence, and a vision for what engineering can accomplish: on the racetrack, in space, and in communities around the world.

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Bring your whole self into every room. 💛

#stemeducation #stanfordengineering #solarcarproject #podcastinterview #motivationalquote

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This lab is dedicated to students in Malawi, the next generation of leaders and makers, whose energy and creativity is essential for the future of the planet. 🌍 And the build is officially COMPLETE!!! We’re ready for you!💖♻️💖

Here’s DAY 3: LAUNCH DAY! 🚀💪
In what can only be described as a heroic effort on everyone’s part, the first ever Malawi-built school desk puzzle-pieced together and the lab came to life just as community members began to arrive for the opening ceremony. We were down to the wire, but overall were able to launch in less than 2.5 days (record fast⚡️). Students, teachers and leaders at New Beginnings Secondary School (most of whom have spent the past few years learning with BloomBox 1.0) gathered, joined by members of the Government of Malawi, including Prof. Chomora Mikeka, former Director of Science, Technology and Innovation (whose vision for Malawi has had a profound effect on my life).

Big, magic moments like these are the sum of many small moments, failures, breakthroughs… This would not have been possible without the work of my team: Peter Kauya, Carl Meyer, Koos Smit, my mom/bff Larissa (+my whole family), Davis Galero, Danny Kachingwe, Mike Nkosi, Ida Puliwa (leader of Othakarhaka), Loyce Chisale (Malawi Institute of Education), Ben Masache (Principal of New Beginnings), Kurt Dahlin (WWFA), Cliff and Herman Hoffman.

I’m grateful to Prof. Greg Deierlein, my thesis advisor, who believed in every step of my year of research for this project. John Barton, Melanie Edwards, Mark Gale, John Davis, Gordon Bloom, Dorian West, David Jaacks, and Warren Lloyd - thanks for showing me that architecture can be a powerful force for sustainable development. David Schick and all of Peninsula Precious Plastics… thank you for joining the adventure, and for helping our team learn about creative plastic upcycling!

Big things bloom in small spaces. 🌺😁🫶

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DAY 2! What if plastic waste could spark a learning revolution? 💖👩🏽‍🎓I recently learned that millions of students in Malawi learn without desks, which poses a real threat to their focus, engagement and inspiration potential while in classrooms. Our team’s big dream has been to divert plastic waste from being burned and instead use it as raw material for school desks. Today we glimpsed that potential in real life in Malawi for the first time. 🚀🌍

Photo dump of the day: We took a break from unpacking to celebrate the beauty of upcycled plastic waste sheets, made from every day items like the buckets in slide two. ♻️ We visited Blantyre’s largest waste dump to learn more about current waste streams and recycling networks for hard plastics (and the great work that’s already happening!). Throughout the day, we recruited all the help we could get as we worked to make the container extra smart and sparkly :)

In search of plywood for our first prototype, we went on an afternoon-long journey, which highlighted the lack of access to wood as a raw material, in addition to the cost, lack of durability and challenging transport logistics (yay local plastic sheet production!). Most of all, we anxiously worked to set up the main event, the state-of-the-art ⚡️CNC router⚡️. When the solar system was fully wired up to invert power from BB1.0 to this lab, and the CNC turned on, it was an ELECTRIC moment to say the least. Thank you David from @peninsulapreciousplastics for all the elbow grease to get our machine up and running! We ended the night with our first assembled wood prototype complete.

Next up: making the first real desk from recycled plastic. Tomorrow is launch day! ⭐️

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This July 4th, I followed a pink shipping container across borders during an international crisis. 🌍

While thousands of Malawians were forced to make the long journey from South Africa to Malawi, our team was moving something in the same corridor: an upcycled furniture makerspace.

The pursuit of hopeful ideas still matters… perhaps most of all during times of crisis. And moonshot dreams are best achieved with diverse teams. This week, we open the doors of the 5th ever BloomBox in Malawi. Optimism prevails once more.💡

Join us as we set up this design lab, and continue building futures, together. ♻️🌷#malawi #southafrica #solarpunk

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Five homemade solar panels aren’t going to save the planet. In the grand scheme of the climate transition, its a drop in the ocean. But hope is something we build… and we’ve got to start somewhere. #solarpunk #solarpower

Thank you to my team @stanfordsolarcar for allowing us the time and resources to try, fail and learn! Cheering you on forever. ☀️🏎️♾️

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Creating sustainable HDPE classroom infrastructure in off-grid settings is our next moonshot. We’re excited to set up production and local supply chains for student desks, back where it all started, to continue building futures together. 🌍♻️ #solarpunk

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We’re delighted to announce on World Oceans week the first documentary film for our fundraiser on June 27 7-10 pm at PPP: Change Makers - the story of Lefteris Arapakis, UN Young Champion of the Earth and Founder of Enaleia - who fishes plastic from the seas. Award winning Film Maker Casey Beck will share after viewing, how she made this moving piece in a Q&A session. We will announce the other two films on ocean plastics later this week.

The suggested donation for our film night is $20/person. All funds will go towards David & partner Sofie of BloomBox Design Labs trip to Malawi to teach New Beginnings high school how to make fabricated furniture from repurposed plastic sheets made by Art Malawi. They are collecting, cleaning and recycling plastic to make useful items in the circular economy Precious Plastics models. PPP created the prototypes with Sofie for her Stanford thesis, and these beautiful desks she designed and stools we make at PPP will be produced in Malawi for schools & students in villages throughout their country!

We will offer raffle tickets to fundraise for $10 each with the first grand prize being two nights at Santa Cruz beautiful Dream Inn🌊or a surfboard from Swellcycle🏄‍♂️Look out for more posts on more films & prizes throughout the week💕You can purchase tix on our website via Venmo or PayPal. PPP friends & partners, ocean lovers & film fans welcome💗
#ocean #plastic #international #design #sustainability

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Congratulations to our graduating solar car members! Thank you so much for being a part of our journey, you will all be greatly missed!

☀️Shine on!☀️

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INTRODUCING OUR ARRAY LEAD: Hey! I’m Sofie and being on the Solar Car team has been the best thing about my time at Stanford. I am blessed to lead the brightest, most radiant sub team on the project…ARRAY!! We are the subteam that literally keeps the lights on. 😏 No shade, all the sub teams are pretty great.

How can I describe our subteam? Well, we are like cells, that try our best even on cloudy days. Inspired by bypass diodes, we try to quietly protect the whole system in what small ways we can. Sometimes I feel like an MPPT, working to keep everyone operating at peak power through late night work sessions.

I’ve been on safety, driving, operations and now array, and every minute has been fun and hard and interesting. This team has taught me everything I know about good engineering, and has given me the chance to grow up alongside the members of SSCP (aka my BFFs) at our shop as we worked on the big dream of racing well-designed cars on sunlight.

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