Aspiring young engineers take on the world

14 Aug 2018

A group of high school students are about to embark on a competitive journey across the world to take part in the FIRST Global Challenge in Mexico City, with a helping hand from UQ.

Students from St Peters Lutheran College and Grace Lutheran College will travel to Mexico this week, as the only team to represent Australia as the QLA Pineapples.

“This is a huge honour to be representing Australia against the 160 countries who compete internationally at FGC,” said St Peters student Vinesh Nangia.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an international organisation which aims to encourage teenagers to become changemakers in their communities, as they take on other students from across the world to compete in designing, engineering and programming a robot.

Each year, FIRST designs a new challenge for the participants.

The title for this year’s challenge is ‘Energy Impact’, where students will form two village alliances and compete to generate the most energy and points than the other alliance.

UQ has previously supported the QLA Pineapples through many of their previous endeavours in Robotics.

Earlier this year UQ sponsored the team at a FIRST Robotics Challenge in January, supplying funding that allowed the QLA Pineapples purchase essential parts for a successful robot.

“We have a functioning robot that is able to complete all components of the challenge, which is really exciting,” said St Peters Student Jess Gunnell.

Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology Executive Dean Professor Vicki Chen said opportunities like this allows the Faculty to support the future generation of Engineers, even throughout their high school years.

“It’s wonderful to see such young minds so enthusiastic about the possibilities of robotics and engineering,” she said.

“We are very excited to see local high school students taking on the rest of the world at an international event of this scale.”

The competition runs from the 15-18 August.

If you would like updates on their progress during the competition, check out the QLA Pineapples’ Twitter: @FRC6063.

For more information on the FIRST Global Challenge, visit: https://first.global/

Media: UQ Communications, Paige Ashby, p.ashby@uq.edu.au, 0430 511 615

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