Team Ireland 2017

Hi Everyone,

Greetings from Ireland.

To introduce ourselves: We are four students from Confey College, Leixlip in county Kildare. Confey is a mixed secondary school catering for 756 students studying 30 different subject areas. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects are very popular with all students taking science in their first three years. Our robotics team consists of 4 students: Eoghan, Stephen (both 4th year students) Jennifer and Brendan (3rd year students). We are really enjoying the challenges presented by this competition. It offers so many opportunities for us to develop our design, programming, engineering and, most importantly our teamwork skills.

We are truly looking forward to visiting Washington, meeting with our international peers and sharing ideas. The multicultural and social aspects of the competition are awesome – imagine, over 160 student teams interacting with each other in an educational and inspirational environment. We wish all the participating nations teams enormous success in their endeavours.

We acknowledge the wonderful support of our mentors, Mr Philip Devereux, Mrs Mary Selkirk and Mr Peter Redmond. We thank our excellent sponsors Y-Volution for their sponsorship and technical support.

Jennifer Zota
Hello, my name is Jennifer and I am 15 years old. (I will be 16 at the time of the competition.)  I, along with Eoghan, am Joint Captain of our team. I don’t have siblings; therefore, I have a lot of free time to myself. To fill this time, I enjoy reading anything and everything, from mystery and science fiction, to world events in the newspaper and scientific articles. On the more active aspect of my life –   I find cycling fun. It’s great to get outside and breathe in the fresh air while I cycle to my friends and around my locality.

In my future career – since I enjoy maths and science so much – I would like to pursue a technical career path; maybe a doctor or an engineer. I would love to travel to different parts of the world and, when I get older, to learn about the people’s cultures and to see how they compare to my own.

Stephen Briggs

Hi, my name is Stephen and I’m Spokesperson for team Ireland. I’m 16 years old and I live in Dublin. I attend Confey Community College which has been selected to represent Ireland in this competition. I have two sisters, Fiona and Rachael. My hobbies are White Water kayaking, water safety, scouting and basketball. My favourite subjects in school are maths, physics and engineering.

From a very young age I’ve been interested in how things work and loved working with my hands and building things. My future career goal is to become a pilot for Aer Lingus (our national airline). My aunt is a captain in Aer Lingus and has inspired me to want to pursue a career as a pilot.

Eoghan Craven-Grace

My name is Eoghan (pronounced Owen) and I’m 16 years old. I am Joint Captain (along with Jennifer) for team Ireland in FGC 2017. I live in county Kildare which is an area in the east of Ireland. I have a love for mechanics, physics, electronics and puzzles all of which have been of great assistance when working on Team Ireland’s robot. I enjoy coding especially in C which is my preferred coding language.

I’m self-taught in guitar and I love music especially rock. I enjoy Karate and I play water polo for Guinness Water Polo Team. I am also a scout in the venture section of my local scout troop.

Brendan Alinquant

Hello, my name is Brendan. I am 15 years old – the youngest member of the team. I have an interest in the programming side of robotics with experience in website creation as well as the Java and Python programming languages.

I spend time playing tennis as a sport and making basic programmes (so I finish my maths homework quicker). I would like to find a future in robotics though I lack the skills in the mechanical department, something which participation in this event has aided me with.

I would like to study abroad. This would fit in with my educational plans. I would like to travel anywhere with a rich history or culture – Italy or Greece, the birthplaces of modern civilization peak my interest particularly. For now I set my ambitions on achieving good results in my secondary education – that’s my immediate goal. I’m looking forward to visiting Washington and participating in the FIRST Global event.  Meeting with, and experiencing so many different peers from the world excites me enormously.



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