Welcome to our alumni page! Here, you can read quotes from previous club members about what POBots meant to them. If you are an alumni and are interested to adding on to this page, email webmasternospam@pobots.com(remove the 'nospam') with the following information:
1)Name
2)Graduation year
3)A quote including what you are doing now (and if POBots helped you get there), what POBots meant to you, and any memorable experiences.
If any club members or mentors are in touch with any alumni, please link them to this page. Thanks to all the alumni who have contributed! It is a nice page because it shows the community how the club prepares students for their future, and it allows the club to hear from some of the people who have been a part of this team.
Brian Johnston (graduated high school in 2004):
"Being on the POBOTS team was a great experience for me, I used to love going just about every night and working on the robot. The competitions were always a blast, no matter where we placed and the company was always good. I graduated the University of Hartford in May 2008 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I am currently working for National Grid as a Mechanical Engineer in the Energy Efficiency department. We are under contract with LIPA since they handle the electricity on the island and I work very closely with them. It is nice to hear from you and about how the POBOTS are doing."
Stacey Gelber (graduated high school in 2002):
"My involvement on the POBOTS team in High School was very important to me. It gave me a sense of belonging to a team and I learned so much about engineering. I made some lifelong friends, and realized that I wanted to study engineering when I went to college. I graduated from NYIT in 2006 with a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering, and while working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, I earned my Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign in 2007. Since graduation I have been working in New York City for an international construction company called Skanska USA Civil. We focus mainly on transportation and infrastructure projects for the city and state for the DEP and MTA/Transit Authority."
Juliana Roberts Dubovsky (graduated high school in 2003):
"Participating with FIRST Robotics and Team 353 has influenced my life beyond academia and my professional career. I made great friends during those 5 years, both young and old. Some of them have passed, but remain important figures and role models in my life. One them even became my husband. The design and marketing skills that I used to promote the team developed further in college, where I created posters, banners and other PR materials for campus events, local issues and community activities. It also introduced me to a realm of science and technology that had never intrigued me before, but now I hope to explore it further at graduate school for sustainable design. FIRST also encouraged me to become a real team player in life, to become a mentor and a leader. Whether it is through teaching others about the small steps they can take to mitigate global warming, joining a local park alliance, or growing through a leadership and community development class, I have learned that engaging in the greater community is essential in my life. Granted, I'm not immersed in the greater robotic community, but the core values of FIRST are now hardwired into my system."
David Dubovsky (graduated high school in 2002):
"When reviewing my high school years my memories of robotics stand out more than any other. I look back and realize how lucky I was, to be a part of something so special and distinct. We were given great opportunities learning to work as a team and receive guidance from great mentors. As far as life now I work in sales/marketing at a software company in NYC. I got married to no other than...Juliana Roberts, who also was a part of the club. We moved to Astoria, Queens late last year and are still 'settling in'."
Andrew Stern (graduated high school in 2002):
"After graduating college with a degree in Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, I started work for a Coastal Engineering practice in Baltimore, Maryland. Many of the skills I acquired while doing robotics are extremely helpful in my field, and the ability to see a system as the whole of its parts is beyond valuable. Whether it is a set of breakwaters with reefballs, or a diving helmet and tank, the idea that everything must work as one always applies. In robotics we had numerous systems that worked together to enable the robot to perform the various functions. We also had a group of people working together as one, which is a tremendous feat in it's own. A lot of the lessons one learns when participating in a FIRST robotics competition can be applied to life in general, and for this, I am grateful for all the wonderful things I learned throughout my experience."
Danny Stern (graduated high school in 2005):
"FIRST robotics provided me the opportunity to work alongside professional engineers in a very relaxed atmosphere. All ideas were encouraged, and it taught me that no idea was a bad idea. An important lesson I learned from FIRST was the best robot does not always win. The team must develop and implement the correct strategy, and be prepared for any and all scenarios."
Engineering Science with Honors
The Pennsylvania State University, Senior Year
Sharon Benjamin (graduated high school in 2004):
"I didn't really have much to do with building the robot when I was on Team 353, The POBOTS. When I got involved with the POBOTS, I was more interested in helping build school spirit for the team. After only 4 years of participating in local competitions, our team was really gathering steam in my junior and senior years - however, to the rest of the school, we were still just a small gathering of excited students, teachers, parents, hidden away in the workshop at one end of the building every day. This was the year when the competition required moving plastic bins around the field to earn points. During my senior year, I grew determined to make sure the rest of our school knew how great we POBOTS were - and more specifically, how proud we were of our robot. I learned through these experiences about creativity, organization, and teamwork while planning events for the team. We found ways to put our beloved robot in the spotlight at school events - occasionally decorated with duct tape and streamers in our team colors. At functions ranging from talent shows, to parent-teacher conferences, to showing middle-school kids how to drive our robot, we showed our community something new to be proud of."
Bowdoin College '08
Chris Catanese (graduated high school in 2006):
"My time spent with POBOTs was an incredible experience that I won't forget. The sleepless nights I put in day after day helped prepare me for the more boring sleepless nights I put in for my school work these past few years. More importantly POBOTs along with FIRST have taught me everything I know about working as a team. Both in school and in the workplace I've found, it’s impossible to get by without the help of others. Robotics helped me pinpoint exactly what I wanted to study in college, and it helped me narrow in on what I want to do with the rest of my life. Thanks to the POBOTs I'll be graduating next December, 2009, from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Over this past summer I worked for ITT Corp, one of the largest defense contractors in the country, thanks to the help of Jack Higgins, where I worked mainly on hardware-software integration. I worked side by side with a programmer to remove any bugs in the program or the hardware, and repeatedly tested the project to make sure it passed all inspection tests and fit all constraints given by the customer. All-in-all robotics proved to be a life changing experience that I wouldn't trade for the world, and my only hope is to get to do it again when I have a kid in high school."
Andy Su (graduated high school in 2011):
"As of Spring 2012, I am in the second semester of my freshman year at the University of Southern California, studying astronautical engineering. While I had small role in the POBOTs team in my final years in high school, my experience watching the action from the sidelines has inspired me to pursue an engineering major. I saw the knowledge that was passively acquired in the math and physics classes being actively applied in designing and building a working (and winning) robot. Sometimes the team members would even run over to teachers ninth period to learn more. Although this passion rarely came out during classes, the robotics team offered an outlet for this energy. I was fortunate enough to follow the team to Nationals, where I experienced this excitement for engineering in full force. All this was just a sampling of what I would witness in college, where proactive students are the norm. Thus I am thankful to POBOTs for priming me for college with the understanding that engineering is more than just number crunching. Now I am an active member in an engineering student organization similar to POBOTs, but instead of robots, we build rockets. And I feel right at home. Fight on, POBOTs!"
