Robotics
Overview
When Rayan began high school, he was most excited about joining their school’s robotics team. He had spent his younger years building drones and LEGO contraptions, and robotics was his next logical step. To Rayan, his robotics club was more like his robotics family. With his “older siblings” on the senior teams winning competitions and placing among the best in the world, Rayan was excited to learn as much as he could before they graduated.
As a freshman in high school, Rayan was selected for FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team Cypher #17464, a rookie team competing alongside the club's 2 preceding veteran teams. He played crucial roles as a builder, implementing the fundamental H-Chassis and doing robot maintenance at competition, and as a marketer, creating a stop-motion promotional video for the FIRST organization and conducting numerous outreaches which allowed the team to place 3rd in the most prestigious award of the tournament, the Inspire Award.
2019-2020:
FTC Team Cypher #17464
Builder and Marketer
2020-2021:
FTC Team VorTechs #18817
Team Captain
The next year, Rayan was elected to be the captain managing the high school's next robotics team VorTechs #18817. Then COVID-19 hit, and the world locked down. This left robotics teams worldwide scrambling for how to work and compete. The pandemic wiped out his team’s outreach opportunities, and as Rayan was only a sophomore– the youngest captain in their club’s long history– he already faced a steep learning curve. Throughout the year, Rayan supplied the resources and locations to host a workshop, restaurant, and hotel for our other team members, who lived and breathed robotics.
Soon, Rayan's high school added further restrictions on how they could operate. It denied access to the previous grants the teams acquired and instated county legislation preventing them from conducting community outreach. The school also copyrighted his teams’ branding, removing it from their use, even after they had cultivated it over the last several years. Despite the obstacles, Rayan found this to be an opportunity to develop his own private team under a separate robotics organization he founded (Centennial Robotics Inc.) and continued to pursue his passions for STEM through FTC team Cryptic #20123. Partnering with local community organizations to present an event series, developing a social network of robotics teams, creating custom parts for their robot, and acquiring sponsorships for funding to name a few, Rayan helped take his team to surpass the district tournaments, win numerous awards including 1st place Inspire, become the most popular STEM outreach provider in the county, and rank among the top 10 FTC robotics teams in the Mid-Atlantic
2021-2023:
FTC Team Cryptic #20123
Centennial Robotics Inc.
After enduring the obstacles placed by the school board, Rayan realized that it was best to take matters into their own hands to control their operations, and he started formulating a plan. For the entirety of the following summer, Rayan organized all the logistics– meeting professionals, writing bylaws, and managing finances– to create a successful 501(c)(3) nonprofit to sponsor their robotics teams and support his mission.