Nidhya S.

Nidhya is a Junior at the Harker School in San Jose, CA. She is an avid roboticist and has been participating in competitive robotics for the past 6 years. She is passionate about building and programming robots, and plans to pursue robotics and computer science through high school and beyond. One of her greatest accomplishments was leading her all-girls team to win the VEX Robotics High School World Championships in May 2021. As the chief programmer on her team, she also achieved the maximum robot skills score last year, and ranked among the top most teams in the world. In addition, Nidhya loves to seek out opportunities to enhance the experience of communities around her. During the pandemic, she designed a VEX scoring and strategy app for Android, iOS and the web to assist teams with the new virtual robotics platform that was used to conduct competitions. This app was shared with the entire robotics community and used as the official scoring app for the VEX Robotics World Championships. She was also the principal organizer and emcee for a two-day all-girls robotics workshop held in July 2021 during which 220 girls and 80 adult mentors participated. In addition, in order to assist students who are underrepresented in STEM, she founded an organization called Boost Robotics to guide students in building and programming their first competitive robot. She’d like to pursue a degree in computer science and engineering, following which she would like to use advanced computer technology to solve real world problems.