Islandbots- Some of Ward Melville’s most talented robotic builders

Islandbots-+Some+of+Ward+Melvilles+most+talented+robotic+builders

Hira Khan, Social Media Manager

Ward Melville’s finest robotic builders can be found in Islandbots, a robotics team participating in Lego robotics competitions across our very own island.

For the 2013-2014 roster, four out of the seven team members are Ward Melville students. Juniors Alex Frenkel, Gary Ge, Andrey Lukin and Jake Welde and sophomores Alec Douglas and Andrew Mata work together under the instruction of their coach, Alexander Kirillov, for their primary goal of participating in the FIRST tech challenge, a high school robotics program. Lukin has been a part of the team for almost six years, Ge has been for two, whereas Jake and Frenkel are new members this year.

Islandbots has a long list of past accomplishments. In 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 with Lukin in the team, Islandbots participated and won first place both years in First Lego League, a robotics programs for ages 9-16. This year, the members won the Hudson Valley Championship as well.

Recently, from April 3-5 the team went to the East Super-Regional Championship, in York, Pennsylvania. When asked about his experience at the competition, Ge said, “Unfortunately we didn’t win, but this was the farthest into the competition we’ve ever come”. Islandbots definitely deserves a huge round of applause.

When asked what Islandbots means to them Welde laughed and explained, ““We eat pizza in Andrey’s basement and pretend to do science,” whereas Ge simply put it as, “A bunch of close friends and engineering enthusiasts that come together to challenge ourselves to build robots in the FIRST Tech Challenge”.

Islandbots certainly will have a bright future, and our rising seniors will without a doubt leave a lasting leagacy in Islandbots.

Islandbots Facebook Page