Athena Kao of Phoenixville led a team of seven Commonwealth Connections Academy students to win first place at the 2012-13 Pennsylvania Real World Design Challenge, which challenges students in engineering and critical problem solving. The team now moves on to compete against other state winners at the national competition in April.

This is the third consecutive year Commonwealth Connections Academy (CCA), a cyber charter school, has captured the state title. Kao, a senior, has captained the team for the past two years.

This year’s competition challenged the students to design an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with engineering software and plan a mission to rescue a child lost in the Philmont Ranch in New Mexico. The teams were instructed to find the child in the least amount of time while also minimizing the total cost.