Students Win
Big at Villanova
On Saturday May 12, 23 South Fayette High School and Middle
School students participated in the 2018 MATE International
Regional Competition at Villanova University. South Fayette was
represented by three company teams competing in the Scout and
Ranger class divisions.
Teams were to be evaluated on four major components: Product
Demonstration, Product Presentation, Technical Documentation
and Marketing, and Advertising Display for their Team, Company
and UROV prototype.
Lionfish Underwater Solutions, 2nd year team, with their Ranger
class UROV named Triton, was comprised of Pat Gannon, Nathan
Sgro (MS), Jay Abraham, Chris Rodi, Michael Kugler, Connor
Maitland, Praman Rai (MS) and Ricky Nair.
Eureka Technology Innovations, 1st year team, with their Ranger
class UROV named Archimedes, was comprised of Katlynn Kyle,
Zoe Coutavas, Spruha Veshi, Meka Stillmak, Brenda Moody,
Ilakkia Maruthupandian, Kelsey and Kailey Go, and Priya
Matreja.
The team that simply dominated the Scout class division, as a 1st
year team, Marine Masterminds, with their UROV named Vishnu,
was comprised of Saranraj Govindaraj, Ezhil Maruthupandian,
Yugal Kithany, Varun Sundaram, Abhinav Srinivasan, Daksith
Ragupathi, Saif Mohammad, and Vinay Sriharish (MS).
Marine Masterminds brought home four trophies:
• 1st Place Scout Spirit and Sportsmanship
• 2nd Place Scout Product Presentation
• 3rd Place Scout Technical Documentation
• Harry Bohm / Jill Zande “Sharkpedo” Award for team that
demonstrated innovation and originality; thinking outside
the box.
Team advisors Brian Garlick, high school technology education
teacher, Lisa Passyn, mechanical engineer and community
sponsor, and Sgt. Jeff Sgro, school district resource officer, couldn’t
be more proud of how hard these kids worked to get there and
how well they performed under great stress and very tough
competition from as far away as Canada.
The MATE competition challenges K-12, community college,
and university students from all over the world to design and
build ROVs to tackle missions modeled after scenarios from the
ocean workplace. The competition’s class structure of beginner,
intermediate, and advanced complements the education pipeline
by providing students with the opportunity to build upon their
skills – and the application of those skills – as they engineer
increasingly more complex ROVs for increasingly more complex
mission tasks.
The MATE competition requires students to think of themselves
as “entrepreneurs” and transform their teams into companies
that manufacture, market, and sell “products.” In addition to
engineering their ROVs, the students are required to prepare
technical reports, poster displays, and engineering presentations
that are delivered to working professionals who serve as
competition judges.
SOUTH FAYETTE
❘
SUMMER 2018
57