Primoris Academy Awarded at FIRST LEGO Bergen Tournament

Primoris Academy, in Westwood, New Jersey, came home with three awards in only their second year participating in the FIRST LEGO League’s Bergen Brickfest Qualifying Tournament on November 18th, 2017. The Primoris Lions team qualified to move on to the state championship. FIRST LEGO teams are required to research real world problems and develop solutions to them. Olga Pylypovych, the team’s coach, said “The research projects gave the students the opportunity to interview the police, government regulators, and water treatment experts. They interacted with adults in a way that most 10 or 11 year olds don’t usually get to do. ” The teams also competed on the performance and design of robots which were built and programed using LEGO MINDSTORM technology.

The Primoris Lions, aged 10 or 11, received first place in Core Values for their teamwork in the Hydro Dynamics Challenge and for community outreach by offering robotics workshops for children in the local community. They researched the problem of medicinal drugs being found in the environment due to improper disposal. The team surveyed residents to find out how they were disposing of medications and they developed an app that tells the user the environmentally friendly way to do so. The app allows the user to find local drop off areas for the drugs. It is available at the Google Play Store. Team members include Jia Jia Fu of Westwood, Anthony Kim of Tenafly, Samuel Zwiebel of Clifton, Dongkon Lee of Palisades Park, Aidan Mascoli of Fair Lawn, Daniel Gilman of Edgewater, Andrew Brahms of Morris Plains and Justin Lee of Mountain Lakes. Jia Jia Fu said “It was so cool seeing our final project after so many months of work.”

The Primoris Cubs, who are 8 or 9 years old, placed second in robot performance and third for their project. The students developed a Water Directing Automatic Barrel which uses moisture and temperature sensors with an algorithm that they developed to control the watering of flowers with rainwater. It prevents wasted water runoff. Team members include Thomas Isernhagen of Waldwick, Wyatt Remegio of Old Tappan, Shailen Shah of Hillsdale, Jed Sloan of New York City, Michael Pylypovych of Glen Rock, Emmanuel Zhang of Closter, Colin Burrows of Paramus, and Ari Wachtel and Mythreya Dharani of Fair Lawn. This is the first experience for most of the Cubs team members competing at First LEGO. They were the youngest students at the event. They look forward to returning to the competition next year.