Sun Koo Kim, a second-year master’s student in mechanical engineering, flew to Australia to compete in the new reality show “Chasing Nature” on Thursday, Nov. 3. The show, set to premiere on Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet next year, will feature mechanical engineering students from universities across the nation attempting to recreate animal attributes with their mechanical know-how.

“Our objective is to make machinery that is supposed to resemble the function of an animal, like an eagle wing or an orangutan hanging onto a tree,” Kim said. “The interesting part is that you have to test it out yourself. If you make a wing, you have to fly. You jump off a cliff; you have to test it with your own body.”

Contestants are separated into teams of four students and given four days to conceptualize and implement their design — one day to design it, two to build it and one more to test it.

Kim will spend 10 days in Australia. The trip is part of his educational experience on the show, according to his girlfriend Lily Chu, Class of 2005.

“It’s a full-expense paid trip to Australia,” Chu said. “They’re taking him out on little field trips here and there. For him, someone who really wants to design in the future, it will really increase his exposure.”

Kim is not the only Stanford student to have participated in the show. Last May, four graduate students were flown to Australia to tape the pilot episode. One of the four, Mark Bianco, a mechanical engineering student with a focus in design, called the show “a great experience.”

“We had to build something fairly complex in a short amount of time,” Bianco said. “There was definitely a lot of engineering involved. I think that our design program here is really a great program and it definitely helped.”

Kim said he is confident that his work at Stanford will help him on “Chasing Nature.”

“The reason I think they started out with Stanford is because Stanford has one of the best product design and mechanical engineering programs in the nation,” he said. “Especially in the graduate departments, they have great curricula to make students creative and help them come up with wacky ideas. I have benefited in the last year by taking courses and doing projects.”

Chu is also optimistic about Kim’s chances on the show. She said she believes that his personality and experience in the field — such as working in Germany at BMW — should help him.

“He really looks to nature for inspiration,” Chu said. “He feels that the world is the most complex and well-created thing we have at our fingertips. This show is perfect for him — and they always say that pressure induces creativity.”

The entertainment aspect of the show makes this experience unique from most mechanical engineering projects. Although the dialogue is unscripted, according to Bianco, the presence of cameramen adds an unusual element.

“I’d say it’s kind of tough to combine engineering and acting into one thing,” Bianco recalled. “We went into there thinking, we’re engineers, we’ve got to build this thing, we’ve got to design it; but at the same time, they’re trying to make a television show, so there’s always a camera in your face.”

However, Kim said that he is “not worried” about being on camera.

“We’ve been doing projects all along,” he said. “It’s what we’re trained to do. We’re going to come up with a solution, whether it be good or not. We’re just going to enjoy the process.”

The show is, according to Kim, targeted toward children and their parents, and it will provide information about both nature and engineering.

“In terms of reality shows, this is as good as it gets,” Chu said. “It’s something that will hopefully show kids how engineering can be fun, how it’s exciting and useful. It will definitely be educational for the people who watch it.”