Elizabeth Moir students represent Sri Lanka at FIRST Global Challenge
This year a small group of young minds from the Elizabeth Moir School will be representing Sri Lanka for the first time in the FIRST Global Challenge. FIRST Global is a nonprofit organization devoted to igniting a passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) among the youth of the world by annually providing a platform for an “Olympic-style” robotics challenge. This challenge brings a team from every nation to participate in a competition that redefines global robotics and bridges diversity among high school students across the world.
Students at work. Pix by Priyantha Wickramaarachchi
The young students of Elizabeth Moir are one team among the 160 nations flying across the world to Washington D.C to participate in the FIRST Global challenge. The competition is designed to aid high school students into becoming scientific leaders who will collaborate to create a better tomorrow. This year the competitions theme is to build a robot that provides access to clean water, one of the “14 Grand Challenges of Engineering” as claimed by the the US National Academy of Engineering, UK Royal Academy of Engineering, and Chinese Academy of Engineering.
The students of Elizabeth Moir School, amidst the tight deadline that led to their selection, became the official team to represent Sri Lanka in the 2017 FIRST Global Challenge.
The team is backed by devoted academic staff, with help given by teachers Dilum Rathnasinghe and Shivashankaran Satchithananthan. “We’re just here to give them a push,”Shivashankaran says humbly.
The extraordinary team of five has been tirelessly working around the clock, every day for the past three months. Team Sri Lanka compromises Ishini Gammanpila, Akash Gnanam, Ali Anver, Vinidu Jayasekara and Amjad Hamza.
Every afternoon the students have been congregating in the classroom of their French Teacher -Isabelle Telliez. Thus in honor of their mutual love for the television series “Narcos” and its protagonist “Pablo Escobar” and their impromptu workshop, the students affectionately introduced me to “Don Pablo Gasper Telliez” – a mechanical contraption a layman would simply identity as a “robot” – the reason behind the students competition entry and enthusiasm for putting in the hours.
FIRST Global Challenge provides every team a‘toolkit’ – a giant box that sits unassumingly in the centre of the table once filled with various mechanical instruments that are now neatly arranged around it. We were told that it represents an almost “equalizer” within the competition with each participating school making their robots with the uniform set of instruments. The innovations separated by a team’s creativity and dexterity in designing and programming it.Thus each team in the competition will be judged on talent irrespective of their country’s background.
We spoke to Akash Gnanam (18), with a passion for coding and software. This “programming guru”, as teased by his teammates, loves experimenting and learning about Apps, Games and Artificial Intelligence. However Akash, much like his other teammates does not let his studies solely define him. The energetic student’s personality burst from within, he’s fast paced speech and expressive features confirm his title as President of the Drama Club. The entire team has been encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and is encouraged to do “a little bit of everything” Akash says.
He commented on the STEM programme and the need for students to enter these subject areas. On being the first team to represent Sri Lanka at the FIRST Global challenge Akash excitedly says “We get to do something on an International level!” The thrill of the competition and the novelty of the programme being deemed by Akash as“an amazing opportunity for us.”
Ishini Gammanpila (16), enjoys Maths, programming and science adding that she also enjoys another spectrum of extracurricular like Drama, Music, Dancing and even athletics. She has previously been abroad competing at an international level, having been awarded the Bronze Medal in the 2016 International Junior Science Olympiad in Bali in December 2016. Ishini describes the FIRST global competition as “infinite in a way” addressing how students are stimulated to go above and beyond their comfort capabilities – the competition asking students to build robots to sustain water is what makes a competition of this nature “limitless in potential.”
The team has an even number of girls to boys, with Ishini sharing her thoughts on the stereotype of the lack of female representation in the STEM subjects in Sri Lanka.
For Amjad Hamza (17) sadly the young innovator will be unable to accompany his fellow teammates due to obligations that need him to stay in the country , however he remains upbeat and jovially talks of his enjoyment for debating and public speaking, taking part in the Sri Lanka Model United Nations with Amjad chuckling“I like doing just about anything with arguing”. Much like all his teammates who are adept in their ability to be versatile, an all round students Amjad also enjoys taking part in school dramas. Amjad says his enthusiasm in joining the schools coding and robotics clubs – coding for Amjad is the “future” with his simple statement “It’s like not being able to speak English if you can’t speak code”.
“Engineering isn’t limited to the physical stuff” 17 year old Ali Anver clarifies as we eye the perplexing robot structure the students have been laboring over, “It’s a mix of things”.
He speaks of the diversity among the teams as each individual bringing their own unique elements to create an equilibrium, Ali says “We all have different mindsets and thus we all bring different balance to the team,” the young innovators all have a pleasant camaraderie around them.
Vinidu Jayasekara (16) says robotics is something new to her but adds that her love for coding seemed to stem from a sentimental place in her family watching her uncles who are software engineers. Vinidu declares the competition as “a huge opportunity” for her and her school speaking of her love for problem solving.