East Hartford: The Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Inc. (CCAT) had the pleasure of hosting Athena's Warriors for the 2009-2010 competition season. This rookie team is Connecticut's first all- girls, all- female mentored FIRST Robotics team created as part of Connecticut Technology Council’s Girls of Innovation program. The purpose of the program is to inspire girls to continue their education and ultimately pursue careers in science and technology.
The team chose their name to emulate the qualities of Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, war, skill, science and technology. They indeed lived up to their team name. On April 1-2, Athena's Warriors competed at the Northeast Utilities Regional Competition at the Connecticut Convention Center. At competition the girls arrived with a working robot but ran into many obstacles. They overcame each obstacle including inspection problems with the chassis, electronics and wiring failures, programming communication to the wireless controller, a bearing slipping from the gear box, and chain issues. Even with all these issues, the girls worked together to create on the spot design fixes to ensure they had a working robot that passed every field inspection. The girls did an amazing job, kept a positive attitude, and ended up ranking 48th out of 56 teams.
The team took home the 2010 Rookie Inspiration Award. This award celebrates a rookie team for outstanding efforts for community outreach and recruiting students to engineering. The team's graduating seniors are attending college in the fall for biomedical and chemical engineering and for general science. The remaining veteran team members are also interested in mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering as well as veterinary medicine, education, and graphic arts. There is no doubt that moving forward this team promises to continue to be a success. Their excitement for the experience and their higher education aspirations are sure to result in their becoming significant workers, innovators, and inventors of the future.
“We are thrilled to be the host of the FIRST Robotics first all-girl team,” said Elizabeth Gounaris. “They performed very well, and we are hopeful that this experience will help encourage women to explore all opportunities available in the sciences.”
The team is always looking for mentors (both technical and non-technical) and sponsors. To discuss opportunities, please contact Elizabeth Gounaris at egounaris@ccat.us.
To see the team, please visit http://athenaswarriors.webs.com/.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Elizabeth Gounaris at 860.282.4227
ABOUT CCAT
The Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Inc. (CCAT) helps private and public entities to apply innovative tools and practices to increase efficiencies, improve workforce development and boost competitiveness. CCAT functions as a unique economic development organization that combines expertise in cutting-edge technology with specialized centers of excellence in manufacturing, education, training, energy, and entrepreneurialism. Throughout these efforts, we promote partnership between industry, academia, and government to create a new collaborative framework for addressing 21st-century economic challenges. http://www.ccat.us