Mission statement
About Us
Founded in the fall of 2018, our team consists of a diverse group of students passionate about using knowledge in robotics and STEAM to benefit the larger community. Our team strives to explore the limit of the intersection of knowledge and creativity, and going into our third year, we are absolutely thrilled by the challenges that await us in the upcoming 2020-2021 season!
Gender ratio of 5:5:1 (male : female : non-binary)
Students from 5 countries and 7 U.S. states
5 students with no prior FTC experience
Our Team Leaders
Vincent Xiao is a junior at Phillips Exeter Academy and serves as our Mechanical Captain. In addition to having participated in all levels of FIRST and VEX robotics, Vincent has also built robots for the SeaPerch and ROV MATE underwater competitions. His robot designs have won numerous regional and state championships and has qualified for the world championship six times. Besides having coached multiple FLL, VEX IQ, and VEX EDR teams, Vincent also serves as a counselor and manager for multiple STEM programs as well as a judge and referee for numerous STEM competitions. Vincent is very excited to continue his robotics journey here at VERTEX.
Neil Chowdhury is an eleventh grade student at Phillips Exeter. Neil started robotics in fifth grade, where he lead a team of 5 students in the FIRST Lego League competition. Transitioning to FIRST Tech Challenge, his team from Washington received the Interleague Championship Finalist Alliance award and participated in the Washington State Championship in his first year of FTC. Neil is thrilled to continue with robotics on Team VERTEX and is happy to bring the robot to life with his programming skills.
Celine is currently an eleventh grader at Phillips Exeter. During her rookie year, she worked primarily on Computer Aided Design and the Engineering Notebook. Though she began as a rookie with little to no robotics experience, she had a passion for anything computer-related: she once taught a computer to count worms from pictures! This year, Celine's looking forward to expanding the scope of VERTEX’s community outreach activities. She’s incredibly grateful for the opportunity to join a FIRST Tech Challenge team that being at Exeter has given her, and hopes to spread her love of everything FIRST stands for to the larger community.
LEARN MORE
Robot Reveal
SKYSTONE Winning Promote Award
Ethipass: AI Bias and Discrimination
Check out our YouTube!
RECENT OUTREACH
PRINT4OURLIVES – The fight against COVID-19
There have been many programs circulating around which allow people to print face shields during this pandemic. However, we recognize that in these difficult times, not everyone has access to resources such as a 3D printer. Many people are struggling with basic needs, such as food and water, and those who are affected are faring Read more about PRINT4OURLIVES – The fight against COVID-19[…]
OpenCV Tutorial Released
We have released a comprehensive tutorial for helping teams set up OpenCV on their robot controller to detect Skystones in Autonomous. If your team uses this, let us know how it goes in the comments!
Seacoast School of Technology
On Wednesday, January 22nd, Tanya and Panda went to the Seacoast School of Technology to present about logic gates! At the high school, they presented to around 40 students in 10th through 12th grade with previous experience coding in a variety of languages, including C#, Java, and Python, but especially C++. Logic gates were the Read more about Seacoast School of Technology[…]
DataRobot Trip!
On January 11th, we held a trip to take 14 Exonians on a site visit to DataRobot, a unicorn startup founded in Boston. Being such a large private company, arranging this visit was an excellent opportunity for exonians outside of robotics club to be exposed to AI applications in real world businesses and its impact. Read more about DataRobot Trip![…]
East Kingston Library
On Saturday, January 11th, we held an engineering workshop for children grades 2 and up at East Kingston Library. We built roller coasters for rainbow ping pong balls out of paper straws! It was a very tough engineering challenge as they discovered that if two straws were too far apart, the ball would fall through, Read more about East Kingston Library[…]
Soldering Workshop
On December 8th and 15th we hosted a soldering tutorial where we invited students at any level to come learn to solder in the design lab. We ordered kits that included a diagram of the end circuit but did not have a step by step walk through of soldering the circuit. We thought this would Read more about Soldering Workshop[…]
Green Umbrella Learning Lab
We partnered up with the Green Umbrella Learning Lab, a sandbox course on campus that has an aim of making the Phillips Exeter campus more eco-friendly. The aim of this course is to find a problem we would like to address with the hope that our solution making campus more eco friendly and then develop Read more about Green Umbrella Learning Lab[…]
ESSO Robotics at the YMCA
Since we taught kids at YMCA about robotics last year, we established a new club dedicated to introducing LEGO Mindstorms to elementary school students. Every Wednesday, a small group of our team members commuted to the local YMCA to host a robotics program in conjunction with an existing after school program for elementary schoolers. Week Read more about ESSO Robotics at the YMCA[…]
Relay for Life
Our school holds an annual fundraiser to help fight cancer and raise awareness about cancer. Various dorms and student groups have booths where they can help raise money. Our team had a booth at the event where we sold boxes and other cool things that Panda and Celine designed and laser-cut! People seemed to be Read more about Relay for Life[…]
Talking to the FIRST Director of DE&I
Last year at FIRST Worlds in Detroit, several of our team members faced insensitive comments and experiences about their race and gender. Considering FIRST’s mission to “inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster Read more about Talking to the FIRST Director of DE&I[…]