The eight-man team of young Nigerian-robotics scientists are set to depart for Singapore Oct. 7 to represent Nigeria in a global competition, the team’s Facilitator disclosed in Lagos on Monday.
The team’s mentor, Mr Ibikunle Joshua-Olayinka, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos, said that the team comprised eight High School students selected to represent Nigeria at the 2023 edition of the First Global Robotics Challenge (FGC) to be held from Oct. 7 to Oct. 10, 2023.
NAN reports that the competition, which is aimed at steering young people to use robotics technology to solve contemporary challenges, has Osadebanwen John-Nejoh, Adetayo Kalejaiye and Daanish Mehra as Nigeria’s representatives.
The rest of the team include Temitope Johnson, Abdulazeez Adekunle, Bashirat Sulaiman, Fiyinfoluwa Oluokun and Adeshina Mojoyinoluwa.
According to Joshua-Olayinka, the delegation, aged between 14 and 18 years are selected and coached by ASEN, an association of STEM Educators in Nigeria, an NGO, with a mission to grow STEM Education in Nigeria.
“The selection is done through a rigorous screening process to identify exceptionally gifted representatives to fly the nation’s flag at the competition.
“Organisers of the competition, First Global, is a non-profit-charity body with a mission to inspire leadership and innovation in youths from all nations by empowering them through education in STEM.
“”Since the inception of the competition in 2017 by FGC, it has empowered high school students around the world to collectively tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.
“The challenge, an “Olympics-style” robotics event, concentrates on revolutionising renewable energy with a focus on hydrogen.
“Team Nigeria has participated in FGC since its inception in 2017 and has won medals in every competition,” he said.
He said that the students were dedicated and committed to making a difference through their innovative solutions to problems of renewable energy with a focus on hydrogen.
He appealed to people to support the team to raise fund for logistics and invest in enthusiastic and ambitious engineers and scientists.
He said that the try-out challenge began with the registration of no fewer than 100 students, drawn from different secondary schools across Nigeria.
He noted that they were divided into groups to access their knowledge of teamwork, creativity, focus, and problem-solving skills.
At the end of the challenge, the best eight were selected to make up the Team Nigeria that would compete with 190 nations of the world.
He stressed that previous members of Team Nigeria got admitted to top universities in the US and other countries and in some cases, graduated at the top of their classes.
He gave the team’s Instagram handle as fgc_teamnigeria for people to follow up.
The First Global Challenge was founded by Dean Kamen to inspire a passion for science and technology, leadership, and innovation, among the world’s two billion youths.(NAN)
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