An all-female team from a Co Offaly school has won a prestigious award at the VEX World Robotics Championships in the US.
The Steminists robotics team won the judges’ award at the event in Dallas, Texas, where they were praised for showcasing their innovation, teamwork and engineering skills.
The team members are students at the Sacred Heart Secondary School in Tullamore – Alice Duffy (12), Emily Thunder (13), Jasmine Matsushita (13), Rachel Ebenezer (13) and Olivia Hoey (14). They were accompanied to the event by their teachers Sindy Meleady and Aisling Bourke.
The team won the overall VEX IQ All-Ireland Robotics Competition earlier this year.
President Michael D Higgins sent a personal message of support to the girls earlier this week praising their creativity and commitment to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).
More than 300 teams from around the world took part in the championships, with the Irish group impressing the judges with their robot, Agatha Trunchbull, named after the main antagonist in Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
But creating Agatha came with its challenges for the group as they each had their roles – builder and game analyst, coder and driver, builder/engineer and driver, research, strategy and team coordinator, robot design and documentation.
“It is quite difficult because it’s more trial and error ... you don’t know what’s going to go wrong and how you’re going to fix it,” Rachael Ebenezer, the Steminist’s research, strategy and team coordinator told The Irish Times Women’s Podcast before their trip to the US.
The young women are due to arrive into Dublin Airport on Saturday.
