Whiz Kid: Alex Fiala

Cleveland Heights Patch Whiz Kid of the Week Alex Fiala

• Just graduated from
• Helped build a battlebot for a local competition in only two months
• Will be a Brand Ambassador for a local electronics company’s website that he describes as Facebook for engineers

Alex Fiala knew there wasn’t enough time.

When the teacher in his engineering technology class at Cleveland Heights High School announced that a local competition to build a battle robot designed to destroy other robots in a tournament needed a new team, his hand shot up, as did his friend ’s.

The problem was they only had two months to research, design and build the bot, putting them at a clear disadvantage with the dozens of teams who were able to start five months earlier.

The teammates worked nights, spent their free time at a local manufacturer that donated equipment and space to work on the competition and even took a week off from school to finish the robot. They worked on it up to the morning of the tournament, held at Lakeland Community College in the spring.

“For the amount of time we had, we got a robot done,” the 18-year-old said. “It was a really deadly looking thing. If you put your hand in that and you touched the edge you would have probably gotten your hand chopped off.”

What they came up with was a dome facing down with teeth on its lip that spun rapidly, creating both a vicious slicing motion and formidable defense, or so they hoped. The robot lost twice in the first two rounds of the double-elimination tournament, sending the boys packing.

The problem was they didn’t have enough time to get the correct materials shipped and to properly research an effective design. They went with aluminum instead of titanium or some other heavier metal and only worked on the project with themselves and one other classmate when other teams had between 10 and 20 students.

Still, Fiala said it was a great learning experience.

“Even though we didn’t do so well in the competition, I had a lot of fun,” he said. “I enjoyed this experience more for the manufacturing part. The manufacturing stuff I learned there is going to help me when I become an engineer because now I’m going to know what parts I need to make and what they’re going to be made from.”

Fiala wants to study mechanical engineering when he attends the University of Akron in the fall, hopefully to enter the robotics field.

While in college he’ll also work an internship to be a brand ambassador for Premier Farnell, an electronics company that wants Fiala to market its new website, Element 14, which he describes as a Facebook for engineers.