Four Pine-Richland students earned a bid to the FIRST Robotics World Championship April 17-20 in Houston, Texas.
Senior Ryan Scott, junior Prisha Dargan, and eighth graders Piya Dargan and Keerthana Visveish compete through BrainSTEM Learning on the Giant Diencephalic BrainSTEM Robotics Team, named for a part of the human brain.
Committed to outreach, the team’s mission is Robots Without Borders. The team has led more than 100 events, each designed to break systemic barriers, such as geographic, health or socioeconomic barriers that may prevent children from achieving their full potential.
Their efforts include creating STEM activity kits for the Ronald McDonald House, raising $5,000 for humanitarian relief in Haiti, starting 20 robotics teams in Central America, and developing a High School to Guaranteed STEM Career Pathway for students in Allegheny Public Housing.
This commitment to outreach is presented to panels of judges at competitions. At the Greater Pittsburgh Regional event in March, the team won the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award, which includes a team sponsorship from NASA and qualified them for the World Championship. The award goes to the team that inspires the most students through engineering and STEM.
At the Miami Valley Regional event in early April in Cincinnati, the team earned the Regional FIRST Impact Award, reinforcing their qualification for the World Championship. The Impact Award is presented to the team that creates the greatest total impact.
At the World Championship, the Pine-Richland students competed for both awards at the global level and advanced to the second round of judging for Engineering Inspiration, placing them in the top four teams.
Ryan serves as the team’s business and outreach lead and notes that he joined the team six years ago intending to do programming or engineering, but has gravitated more toward the business and outreach side of the team.
“Helping others has been just as rewarding as building a cool robot, especially on this large of a scale,” he said.
FIRST Robotics, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an international youth organization that operates the FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST LEGO League Challenge, FIRST LEGO League Explore, FIRST LEGO League Discover and FIRST Tech Challenge competitions.