Oswego student wins robotics competition, advances to world championships

Jensie Coonradt, 9, of Oswego won the World Robot Olympiad national competition this past weekend.

She is a member of Team RoboGals, which also includes Kaiya Hollister of Aurora, a fifth grader at the John C. Dunham STEM Partnership School.

The girls met earlier this year at an after-school Lego Robotics program and quickly decided to sign up for the youth competition, which involves 20,000 teams representing more than 50 countries from around the world. Bringing together Hollister’s mechanical engineering aptitude and Coonradt’s programming skills, they have worked throughout the past four months prototyping, building and testing their robot.

Following the win at nationals, the team will now advance to the world championships in Doha, Qatar this November.

“Lego Robotics is fun, but it is also frustrating and hard at times, so it is the hardest fun I’ve ever had,” said Hollister. “I am excited to go to Qatar to see all the other teams’ robots.”