Upper St. Clair Robotics Team Advances To State Championship

UPPER ST. CLAIR, PA - A team of Upper St. Clair High School students will compete in the upcoming Pennsylvania FIRST Tech Challenge Championship near York. The challenge is an international robotics competition for students in grades seven through 12 in which teams design, build and program a robot.

Botsburgh team members include junior Nathan Scher; sophomores Varun Damarla, Sambhav Saggi, Sujay Shah, Nitish Sharma; and freshman Sahil Bhalodia. The students are coached by Hunaid Nulwala, Ph.D., Ketan Shah and Alan Scher as well as Upper St. Clair senior Moez Nulwala, who serves as a mentor.

Botsburgh qualified for the state competition by placing third in the Inspire Award category at the West Central Pennsylvania Qualifier in Johnstown last December. The team was recognized for hosting several community events at the Upper St. Clair Township Library aimed at introducing Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math (STEAM) to young children. Efforts included a robot petting zoo and city maker events.

Also, the team was lauded for developing a modular approach to programming that simplified the Java code. The team placed this code under the MIT license, and it is available for free on github.com.