Chadwick D. McNab Memorial Scholarship

A hush falls over the crowd as the video plays, the only sound the flipping of pages and the faint scribble of pen on paper. You can almost feel the gears turning in everyone’s mind as we try to comprehend the task that is being presented to us. The beginning of January marks the kickoff to the First Robotics Competition for the year. I joined the robotics team in my eleventh grade year and trying to figure out what game we’re playing is one of the most exciting topics to talk about. It is different each year and I know it will be a challenge to design and code the scouting system for the game in the upcoming months, but it is fun to discuss the theme, debate what the teasers might allude to, and joke about whether it will be a water game finally. I am drawn to the unpredictability of the event and the challenge it will ultimately present as I get to work with a close team to figure it out. There will be frustration, laughter, and games, but I crave the underlying excitement of it all. Working on the scouting system for my robotics team was months of hard work. 7 days, 30 hours per week. It nearly qualified as a full time job. But it was my passion. What we made was innovative and new. Instead of following a traditional route of paper scouting, we designed and created our own software that allowed us to program Xbox controllers to record actions of robots on the playing field which would then be transferred through SQL server to an Excel spreadsheet that generated statistics and predictions about our competition as well as our allies. This data could be used by our drive team to come up with a strategy for each of our matches. Often at competition we would have other teams approach us to ask about our unique system, and asking us for help improving their own. While our system was very beneficial to our team, it was also a lot of fun to work on. We had a small group, 3 of us students as well as two mentors, who would work on it together each night. We’d have brainstorm sessions on the whiteboards, play games as a mental break, host mini presentations and design reviews, and help each other out. I became the captain for our small group and was in charge of bringing the project to the rest of our robotics team, lead presentations to elementary school kids, and teach people from across the world at competition how our system worked. It is what got me into computer science as a career and it something that I am still very proud of to this day.

Imagine missing your bus four times in one week, forgetting to pull the stop request line, and ending up in a random town when you are just trying to get home. That was me during the first week of my internship in downtown Pittsburgh. But later that summer, I found that I would use that experience to create something to help people with this exact problem. Two summers ago, I worked as a project assistant for Simcoach Games, a company focused on creating both entertaining and educational games. The project I contributed to was called Next Stop, designed to teach people, especially those with learning differences, how to confidently navigate public transportation. My rocky start with public transit made me realize how hard it can be for young people with learning challenges. How do they manage commuting without any guidance? Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that our project for the summer would teach just that. Next Stop would guide players on how to get where they need to go without all the chaos I’d experienced firsthand. Over six weeks, our team of two artists, two programmers, and one level designer built a prototype of a 3D bus simulator using Unreal Engine. We used agile scrum development to make sure everyone stayed on track and contributed their best work. We also learned how to more comfortably use GitHub to collaborate and make changes to our project as needed I served as one of the programmers, and I was responsible for developing mechanics that made the experience feel real. One of my tasks was to create an in-game public transportation app similar to Transit or Google Maps. Players could pull up their virtual phone, complete with GPS, a clock, and specific instructions for pickup and drop-off. I also programmed various player interactions, such as pulling the stop request wire, flagging down the bus, and sitting down in the bus without flying off as soon as it moved. To add more realism, I created NPCs who moved around the city, walking only on sidewalks or crosswalks, and slowing down the bus when necessary. The coolest part of this project? It was later used in a study conducted by the University of Pittsburgh. The study focused on which medium was most effective in teaching individuals with learning differences how to navigate public transportation. Knowing that our work might contribute to helping millions of people get to where they need to go without feeling lost or intimidated was incredibly rewarding. I took my struggles with public transportation and, with my technical and teamwork skills, turned them into something that could help others avoid the same headaches I went through. That’s a pretty great feeling. To answer how working in technology inspires me, I think back to the end of that summer, when a researcher said to our team, “Thank you. We hope this game helps a lot of people.” It’s Moments like these, and the fulfillment of creating something meaningful, that inspire me to want to continue using technology for positive change through games and interactive experiences.

In eighth grade, I decided to join the high school robotics team as a useful introduction to programming and engineering design, as well as a fun experience to meet new people. What I discovered was that much of the organization was student-led, and the adult mentors were very hands-off. I found out during my first year that we were short on experience in several crucial areas of the team. Because of this, we struggled to perform together as a group. The following year, I stepped up and decided to bring things together. One of the first things I did was take charge of the financial aspects of the team and create a fundraising committee to raise money for parts, tools, and other resources. Even though this was something new to me, I taught myself how to apply for grants and reach out for sponsorships and donations. Using my writing and organization skills, I was able to coordinate a spreadsheet with a master list of all possible grants and sponsors to contact regarding potential funding and support. I conducted regular meetings with a fundraising committee to check that our team was putting in sufficient effort toward fundraising and sponsorship outreach. These skills have been passed down over my four years of high school and remain with the team now that I have graduated. Another area of improvement was in our team's ability to communicate common engineering technology concepts in electronics, programming, and product design. Having a very limited array of engineering and technology classes to gain knowledge and experience from, I sought out YouTube tutorials and online courses to help me be better equipped to take the initiative in our robotics projects. With an already small attendance roster for our team that first year, I took it upon myself to supervise the construction of our electronics board and main robot structure and transfer information between teams, which included the programming team that utilized Java and provided API libraries to code the robot's movement and task performance objectives. I was able to learn on the job and communicate the instructions to those with less experience for a team effort. In just two years, we raised over $21,000 in grants and expanded our team from ten to thirty members actively helping make our team the best it could be. I was able to gain confidence in an area that had originally been completely foreign to me, and I am inspired to lead others in having an enriching experience learning about STEM and the world of robotics. Working in engineering and technology constantly inspires me to push myself out of my comfort zone and work to create things from ideas in my head. Through working with robotics, I have gained both soft and technical skills that allow me to take initiative and produce applications and projects in my college career. I am excited to learn more that will help me improve and level up my creations and make a lasting impact on important issues in my community.