On Saturday, December 5th, nearly 1000 regional robotics enthusiasts attended the First Lego League (FLL) Challenge at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC). Over seventy student teams participated in the event, including two all female teams, sponsored by the PghTech Women Network™.
FLL is a robotics competition for students 9 to 14 years old, during which each team must build a robot using the same toolkit. The 2009 competition was dubbed “Smart Move,” with all teams working on a unique transportation-related research project, which was presented to judges during the competition. One of the all female teams opted to do research on Pittsburgh’s tunnels, the pros and cons. For example, they learned that when it rains traffic slows down when approaching a tunnel.
During the actual competition, each team places the robot on a platform – about the size of a pool table — and the robot maneuvers around it.
The PghTech Women Network™ sponsored “Executive Powers” team took second place out of 72 teams in the Teamwork category. “Girls Investigating Robots” (GIR) comprised the second all-female team; these teams were formed by sixteen girls from several Pittsburgh-area schools and some home school students. As a result of the PghTech Women Network™ advisory committee, these students from around the region were encouraged to participate and are referred to as “Jr. PghTech Women” by the committee. This group of students decided on the team names mentioned above.
Sara Sibenaller, an engineer at Philips Home Healthcare Solutions and lead coach for the girls’ teams commented, “The PghTech Women Network™ is proud of the outstanding accomplishments of a very young, first-year team and we look forward to working with them again next year. We encourage any other young girls in Pittsburgh to contact us if they are interested in joining these teams.”
One of the competition judges commented, “The Executive Powers team had the ability to explain the technical process coupled with fresh enthusiasm.”
PghTechWomen Network™ team coaches and advisory committee were all volunteers, and included Krystle Englehart, Sharon Long, Miranda Berner, Erika Franzen, Joyce Query, Rena Venturini, Mollie Llewellyn, and Sara Sibenaller. Twenty corporate sponsors from the region made these teams become a reality.
About PghTech Women Network™
PghTech Women NetworkTM, hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council and sponsored by Google Pittsburgh and Sycor Americas Inc., provide female technology professionals a forum for networking, best practice exchange, online interaction and community visibility. PghTech Women NetworkTM provides women working in technology positions (STEM) an opportunity for peer-to-peer networking, targeted career development and technology-focused civic and business engagement. Conceptualized by female industry thought-leaders, this network will seek to provide strategic direction to women in the field of information technology.
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