Robotics outreach benefits area high school

Rice mechanical engineering grad student Andrew Lynch is using his knowledge of robotics to help Lamar High School students in Houston develop new interest and talent in science and engineering.

His efforts to give back to the local community, he says, are his way of thanking all the people in the engineering profession—including his own parents, both engineers—who helped him develop his interest “in building and making things work.”

“I want those who have helped me understand just how much it meant to me,” Lynch, 24, explained. “And I want to generate the enthusiasm in high school kids that I was fortunate to have found.”



He chose Lamar, an inner city Houston school, for its close proximity to Rice. Faculty and administrators at the diverse school were encouraged by his interest.

“Andrew has the command of these students’ attention,” said Lamar physics teacher Josephine Managuit. “The students really showed enthusiasm working with Andrew and some of his fellow Rice students.”

In late 2008, enough interest was generated for students at Lamar to form a robotics club. In its inaugural challenge last summer, a team built a robot over a six-week span an entered it in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. The Lamar team made it to the semi-final round of competition and won a Judge's Award.



The seeds were planted for bigger and better things, and this school year two separate teams at the high school tried their hand at building robots for a new competition, with Lynch and fellow Rice student, Allen Gregory, a Rice senior and computer science major, mentoring the teams. One team has qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championships to be held this summer in Dallas. The event is attracting more than 1,000 teams from middle schools and high schools across the globe, including Asia, South America and Europe, will compete.

“We’re very excited to be taking part,” said Lamar senior Keila Fong, a robotics club officer. “Working with Andrew has really inspired all of us. He is so knowledgeable and really allows us to get our hands dirty in the project. It’s given us the confidence that we can succeed.”

Ellen Farber, another Lamar senior, echoes Fong. “It doesn’t matter how late we have to stay, or how hard we have to work on weekends,” she said. “It’s taught us that math and science can accomplish something real. We feel it’s very important… that it can make a difference for us.”

Lynch, a Katy native who received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Texas at Austin in 2007, has also helped form a robotics club at Rice. The club’s adviser is Lydia Kavraki, Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and a professor of bioengineering.

Lynch, who studies in the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory of the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department at Rice, hopes the group will become involved in work with other local high schools.

“We are very proud of this effort to reach out to the community and Lamar,” Sallie Keller-McNulty, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the George Brown School of Engineering, recently told her staff during a meeting at Rice. “This kind of effort really represents the school and Rice in the best possible way.”

Learn more about the Lamar Robotics Club on its web site.

By Dwight Daniels, School of Engineering Office of Communications