Team Bangladesh wins global robotics championship

Bangladesh has won the 2020 First Global Challenge, the biggest high school robotics competition in the world. 

With 117 points, it secured top position out of 174 countries followed by Chile with 115 points, while Algeria was named third.

The 12-week long competition with the theme of connecting the global community was held online on October 31.

The members of the team are: Sujoy Mahmud, 17, from Mangrove School, Razeen Ali, 18, from Sir John Wilson School, Mahi Zarif, 16, from International Hope School, Shahrear Shemanto, 16, from DPS STS, Abrar Jawad, 15, and Aymaan Rahman, 15, from Bangladesh International School and College, Bianca Hassan,19, from Dhanmondi Tutorial, Zahraa Chowdhury, 14, from Sunbeams, Areebah Nawar, 14, from South Breeze and Fairooz Hafiz Farin , 18, from Mastermind.

All of them are the students of The Tech Academy.

There were 4 team mentors – Shams Jaber, Shoaib Mirza, Namrata Roy, and Fardin Ananta.

Shams Jaber, director of The Tech Academy said, the team was formed in 2017. 

“Where other countries made the team ahead of a competition, we were teaching children for a long time and they became our members later. This is our strength,” said Shams Jaber.

The competition consisted of technical challenges to display the team’s creativity and skills in the engineering fields, circulating awareness about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education through social media.

The last challenge was STEM talk interviews where the participating countries were given the opportunity to ask questions to pioneers in the fields of STEM and other fields such as career building professionals and distinguished engineers.

Also Read - Team Bangladesh shines at global robotics competition

During the tournament, the team constructed multiple robots to accomplish specific tasks.

In the “Technical Challenge” category, the Bangladeshi team excelled scoring more points than any other country, which helped them win the trophy.

With many of the older team members retiring this year and last year's 7th position, the pressure was on to do well and take the nation to new heights.

The first edition of the competition was held in the United States in 2016, while the second one was held in Mexico in 2016, and the third one in Dubai in 2019.

Due to the coronavirus epidemic, this fourth edition of the First Global Challenge was virtual.