MY ACHIEVEMENTS
Always International Since 7th Grade
Since 2013, I've been attending various competitions that I was interested in. These include FTC Robotics, DECA, Speech and Debate, Science Olympiad, and Coding Contests. I've also partaken in some out-of-the-box projects, ranging from reimagining the Hot Wired Swerve Drive for Overcharged all the way to taking the initiative to manage a fundraiser for special needs children in China.
AWARDS
Raising the Bar
FIRST Tech Challenge: Hot Wired Robotics
State Finalist Alliance Captain (2014)
Super Regionals Winning Alliance First Pick (2014)
World Championships Winning Alliance Captain (2014)
States Semi-Finalist Alliance (2015)
Super Regionals Winning Alliance First Pick (2015)
World Championships Semi-Finalist Alliance (2015)
State Finalist Alliance Captain (2016)
Super Regionals Winning Alliance First Pick (2016)
World Championships Finalist Alliance First Pick (2016)
World Championships Inspire Award Winner (2016)
State Inspire Award Winner (2017)
Super Regionals Semi-Finalist Alliance (2017)
Houston World Championships Division Finalist Alliance Captain (2017)
Science Olympiad
State 2nd Place Rotor Egg Drop (2014)
State 1st Place Robocross (2015)
State 4th Place Simple Machines (2015)
Nationals 26th Place Robocross (2015)
State 2nd Place Robot Arm (2016)
State 1st Place Optics (2017)
State 4th Place Robot Arm (2017)
State 1st Place Hovercraft (2018)
Speech and Debate
National Qualifiers 4th Place Public Forum (2018)
National Qualifiers 4th Place International Extemporaneous Speaking (2018)
NSDA Speech Academic All-American Award Winner
Tournament of Champions Qualifier and Attendee for Extemporaneous Speaking (2018)
DECA
SCDC 1st Place Marketing Management Team Decision Making Role Play (2017)
SCDC 1st Place Marketing Management Team Decision Making (2017)
ICDC Qualifier and Attendee
SCDC 2nd Place Financial Services Team Decision Making Role Play (2018)
SCDC 1st Place Independent Business Plan (2018)
ICDC 6th Place Independent Business Plan (2018)
FIRST Tech Challenge: Overcharged
State Tech Finalist Alliance Captain (2018)
State Inspire Award Winners (2018)
FIRST Tech Challenge Dean's List Finalist (1 of 4 Finalists) for the State of Oregon (2018)
Super Regionals Cascade Finalist Alliance Captain (2018)
Super Regionals Innovate Award 3rd Place (2018)
Houston World Championship Franklin Finalist Alliance Captain (2018)
Computing Competitions
Willamette University Programming Competition 3rd Place (2016)
George Fox University Programming Competition Attendee (2017)
George Fox University Programming Competition Attendee (2018)
EChO
Education for Chinese Orphans
After hearing a touching speech from the President of EChO, Robert Tadjiki, I was moved to help the underprivileged students in China. I had the initiative to manage and organize a fundraiser and Lego Drive for these students. I ended up raising over $750 and 8 tubs filled to the brim with Legos. This helped the 75 students over 3 stations in EChO and I'm really glad that I was able to successfully complete this outreach.
NeoFlow App
My Self Taught Success
When setting out to code the NeoFlow app, I was aware of the fundamentals of Computer Science, but I didn't really know how to establish a connection with the Cloud - that seemed near impossible for a busy 16-year-old teenager to do. After several 4 AM nights of straight coding, I managed to do it - I could add data to the cloud server on Microsoft Azure. Well, two years later, I can do this whole process in a few hours. Although my first concept of NeoFlow was pretty cool, I plan to completely redo the application to make a genuine impact and eliminate receipts.
Swerve Drive
My Favorite Design
What was initially just me carrying the Spark Tech Tradition, recreating the Swerve Drive gave me the opportunity to think outside the box and improve what Hot Wired wasn't able to. I designed the Swerve Drive we used for Tetrix last year and helped in the design of the one for Actobotics this year. This Swerve Drive is probably among my greatest accomplishments because it functions properly and effectively, the best of both worlds.
Overcharged Management
How I revolutionized the Spark Tech Team Structure
Being the only member on Hot Wired to remain, I was also the only one dissatisfied with the team system. Hot Wired operated on a hierarchal system that rarely handed out opportunities to those eager to learn more about robotics. Because of this system, never really got the opportunities to expand upon my knowledge. Until Overcharged rolled up. Over the span of 6 months, I worked my way up to the role of captain, where I was faced with the ability to make many impacting decisions.
One of those decisions I made was to remove parental involvement to my fullest ability. Hot Wired had some of these problems but Overcharged never did. Although we had to suffer through a lot of downs, we eventually learned at the end while being successful, which is the most important thing.
I also made sure our team had a dynamic. Instead of showing up to robotics, working, then going back, I made sure we had conversations and were actually friends instead of teammates. This increased our productivity by a lot while also making our team much closer. This method has also helped merge the girls into the team properly, as they aren't their own separate group which many teams have a problem with.
Finally, I've implemented an interdisciplinary system. This allowed all the members to pick one of each concentration: engineering and business. I feel that it's important for all members to know about both concentrations so that communication between both departments would be near seamless. Furthermore, the value of someone knowing both subjects would be extremely vital in our future world - in a way, I'm helping prepare the Overcharged Members to change the future.
