MOSCOW – Three years of competition with the Clean Snowmobile Challenge, many nights under the hood of the engine, finding technical solutions and building teams has to have an effect on a student one way or the other.

For Nathan Bradbury, this year's team leader for the University of Idaho's Clean Snowmobile Team and member for two years prior, it's made all the difference. He's developed from an automotive technician to a researcher in transportation engineering, who will go on next fall into a master's program in mechanical engineering.

Bradbury graduated from Lakeland High School in Rathdrum in 1995, came to UI with an associate degree in automotive technology, and had worked in the automotive field for a while. He got involved with the Clean Snowmobile Team in fall of 2001, and has been instrumental in the last two championships, says his adviser Karen DenBraven.

"This year he is the team leader, guiding the team in the design of a clean and quiet two-stroke engine. He had an internship with the National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology (NIATT), helping a graduate student with a hybrid power-plant to be used in snowmobiling. Last summer he received a competitive grant to research technologies to improve the fuel efficiency and decrease emissions from two-stroke engines used in snowmobiles."

Also last summer, he and another graduate student developed and tested a plan to reduce the exhaust emissions from touring snowmobiles used by Rendezvous Sports for Yellowstone National Park tours. He just received word that he has an internship this summer with Bombardier, maker of the Ski-Doo.

Bradbury graduates with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a much larger tool kit for competing. In life.