Electrical engineering student powers toward race engineering 

In a lab inside the Swearingen Engineering Center, junior Haley Stokes built a system that changed her life. 

What started as a project for her Introductory Electrical Engineering Laboratory (ELCT 201) turned into a working telemetry system that tracks cars’ speed, tire pressure and acceleration in real time.  

“I was trying to make a cheaper consumer version for nerds like me who like to look at data,” Stokes says. “It tells you everything about the car: brake, acceleration, tire pressure and more.” 

Stokes’ system mimics the high-end data systems professional race teams use, but hers is cheaper, lighter and designed for grassroots drivers. 

“Her ability to transfer theoretical topics to a real-world application is a key element that ELCT 201 strives to develop in our students, and I am excited that this class has created an amazing opportunity for Haley,” says Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Kristen Booth, who taught the ELCT 201 course. “I'm looking forward to seeing where she goes in her career.” 

That project also caught the attention of Bosch Motorsports, a global telemetry provider for the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA), ultimately helping her land a role in motorsport engineering. 

Stokes’ path to race engineering was not a straight track. She completed high school requirements at age 14 and dual-enrolled at Midlands Technical College. The University of South Carolina was an obvious college choice after graduation since she grew up in South Congaree, located 20 minutes west of campus.

“If you grow up around here, you go to Carolina games when you're a kid, and it's always, ‘I'm going to go to USC,’” Stokes says.

She first enrolled at USC in 2017 and earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communications. But Stokes admits that she felt “a little lost,” unsure of which career to pursue. 

Her instincts pointed back to where she began: the garage. 

Stokes spent hours watching her father, a former civil engineer, build high-performance race cars. “He was always in the shop building things,” Stokes says. “It goes back to me in middle school saying, ‘I want to be an engineer.’” 

But Stokes took a detour before pursuing her engineering ambitions. She enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, serving four years in a special operations squadron as an aircraft electrician. 

“I didn’t do engineering initially because I didn’t think I could,” Stokes says. “But working hands-on, seeing what I saw in my dad in myself, and working alongside engineers in the Air Force made me realize I could [be an engineer].” 

Stokes military experience gave her the problem-solving mindset and assurance she needed to reenter college. In the fall of 2022, she returned to USC, this time for electrical engineering. 

“It’s really cool to see how much campus has grown since the first time I was here,” Stokes says. “I wouldn’t have gotten that perspective if I’d gone anywhere else.” 

Stokes has immersed herself in the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing community, joining the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Carolina Automotive Club and a co-op at ExxonMobil, where she rotated through mechanical roles. 

“Electrical engineers are becoming incredibly important and broad,” Stokes says. “They can function in areas that mechanical and civil engineers used to dominate.” 

Outside the classroom, racing became Stokes’ outlet. At the same time she returned to USC, she started high-performance driving events (HPDE). Her father, who once raced sport bikes, joined her that December and they spent weekends together traveling to local and regional tracks. 

“Since then, it's pretty much all we do. If he's not working or building something, or I'm not working on cars he's built, we're doing HPDE instructing,” Stokes says.

Stokes returned from the military with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and those weekends became more than just racing. 

“Going to these race events helped me reconnect with people,” Stokes says. “My dad was kind of my safety blanket because he's been around me enough and seen how I have had to adjust, and he works well with veterans.” 

Through the racing community, Stokes connected with Track Heroes, a nonprofit that helps veterans manage PTSD through cognitive therapy paired with HPDE. She started volunteering for the group, managing its social media and instructing veterans on the track. 

During an event at Virginia International Raceway in 2023, a veteran told her about the Women in Motorsports North America (WIMNA) program, a Bosch-sponsored initiative supporting women in racing. Stokes brought her telemetry system to motor events like these over the next couple of years. When she showed it to Jacob Bergenske, director of Bosch Motorsports, in early 2025, he saw its potential. 

“He loved it,” Stokes says. “He told me, ‘Our engineers know how to make expensive systems, but they don’t always understand what grassroots racers need.’” 

Bergenske served as her mentor as she refined her design through access to Bosch’s engineers and equipment. That connection led to her work in data and systems engineering with IMSA. Now, Stokes spends her weekends flying to races across the United States and Canada, working under the tent with team engineers and managers with her headset on and analyzing telemetry data. 

“You control the backbone; the main computer everything is interpreted through,” Stokes says. “Eventually, I’ll move into race engineering, where you make the final call on everything related to the car.” 

Balancing academics and racing is demanding. During race season, she finishes classes, travels to tracks on Thursdays, works through race weekends, and often returns to Columbia early Monday morning just in time for class. 

“If I didn’t love it so much, I wouldn’t be doing it. But it’s incredibly rewarding even when your team doesn’t win,” Stokes says. 

Though she is often one of the few women at the track, Stokes says she is comfortable standing out. 

“I grew up on a racetrack,” Stokes says. “I had my pink Barbie scooter at the track when I was a kid. And in the Air Force, I was one of the few women in special operations.”  

She believes programs like WIMNA are crucial for connecting women to mentors and opportunities. 

“There are women who didn’t grow up with the background I had who want to get into this and don’t know where to start,” Stokes says. “Associations like WIMNA help them do that. You’re seeing more women engineers, managers and technicians now.” 

Between coursework, racing and lab projects, Stokes is also weighing post-graduation offers from Boeing, DXDT Racing and WRT Racing, but her heart is at the track.

“I love to race cars,” Stokes says. “Working with prototype cars, going to Le Mans - that’s not an opportunity I’m likely to pass up.” 

For now, she is focused on finishing her degree, traveling to races and refining her telemetry system. 

“Electricity is one of those things people either understand or they really have a hard time grasping,” Stokes says. “For me, it’s just kind of a natural inclination.”