News & Events

Fastek Sponsors Youth Lego Robot Competition

Fastek is a sponsor for the 2008-2009 FIRST LEGO League (FLL), a global program created to get kids excited about science and technology. Geared for ages 9-14, FLL utilizes theme-based Challenges to engage kids in research, problem solving, and engineering. The cornerstones of the program are its Core Values, which emphasizes gracious professionalism, contributions of others, friendly sportsmanship, learning, and community involvement. Each annual Challenge has two parts, the Project and the Robot Game. Working in teams of up to 10 kids and guided by at least one adult coach, team members have about 10 weeks to:

- Build a robot that will complete a pre-designed missions
- Analyze, research, and invent an assigned solution
- Present their solution in front of a panel of judges

The team competed in the FLL Regional Tournament on Saturday, December 13th in Cedar Rapids. They were awarded the first place trophy for demonstrating the highest level of the FLL Core Values, they ranked 4th out of 39 teams on their robotic missions, and earned a spot to compete at the state tournament in Ames at Iowa State University on Saturday, January 17th.

To show our appreciation to Fastek for co-sponsoring the team, providing our team t-shirts, and throwing us a victory pizza party, we held a demonstration night for them. It was regarded highly from both the upper management of Fastek as well as the company founder, Arvin Dandekar.

Iowa State Senator Swati Dandekar also showed her support while showing up in the team color of lime green. She has extended the team an offer of a tour of the Iowa state capital building.