A decade of building
things that move.
My engineering thread starts earlier than any project, any competition, or any award. Robotics was a regular school activity from Grade 2 — the earliest, most consistent introduction to the question of how to make a machine respond to instructions — the central question of Computer Engineering. That foundation shaped everything that followed.
In Grade 4, that foundation led to the First Lego League Nationals — a national-level engineering competition entered at age 9, where Team won the Rising Star Award. In Grade 8, the Robo Club EV3 Robotics Summer Camp formalised the autonomous programming and hardware debugging skills. In Grade 11, a full Drone Building Workshop produced a competition-ready drone — which placed 3rd in the school drone race.
Each stage built on the last. The instinct is always the same: build something that does not just sit there. Make it move. Make it respond. Make it do something useful under real conditions. This is what drew me to Computer Engineering — the discipline where you cannot separate the software from the system it runs on.
- Grade 2: School robotics as a regular activity — the origin of all hardware engineering thinking
- Grade 4, 2019: First Lego League Nationals — competed nationally, won the Rising Star Award
- Grade 8: EV3 Robotics Summer Camp at Robo Club — autonomous navigation, sensor integration, hardware-software debugging
- Grade 11: Drone Building Workshop — full build from frame to flight (ESC, Betaflight, PID tuning)
- Grade 11: School Drone Race — placed 3rd, requiring precision tuning and fast in-field debugging
- Across all stages: iterative build-test-fail-fix discipline, embedded systems thinking, team engineering
First Lego League — Nationals, Rising Star Award (Grade 4, 2019)
Competed at a national engineering competition at age 9. Won the Rising Star Award — recognising innovation, teamwork, and problem-solving under competition pressure. The first proof that the instinct to build things and compete with them was there from the very beginning.
National Competition · Rising Star Award · 2019 · Grade 4School Robotics — the origin
Robotics as a regular school subject from Grade 2. Not a one-off workshop — a sustained, recurring engagement with how machines move and respond to code. Everything else grows from here.
First Lego League — Nationals, Rising Star Award
National FLL competition. Engineering, teamwork, and problem-solving under time pressure at age 9. Won the Rising Star Award. The starting point of everything competitive in the engineering space.
EV3 Robotics Summer Camp — Robo Club
Autonomous robot programming: sensor integration, line following, obstacle avoidance, and iterative mechanical design. By Grade 8 this was a natural next step — robotics had been a school constant since Grade 2.
Drone Build & Race — 3rd Place
Complete drone build: frame, motors, ESC, flight controller, Betaflight, PID tuning — the exact point where code has to answer to physics. Get the gains wrong and the drone crashes; there is no exception handler. Competed in school drone race and placed 3rd — a direct result of the build quality and fast in-field adjustment.
FLL Nationals 1
FLL Nationals 2
FLL Nationals 3
FLL Nationals 4