Local robotics team goes to nationals

By David Beard, Globe Staff

A group of local students who studied climate change's effect on bluefin tuna have advanced to the national robotics championship in Atlanta.

The nine-member, middle-and-high-school team from Lexington was one of two in the state that made it past a state competition with more than 400 teams late last month. The groups from Lexington and Leominster, which designed, built and programmed their own robot, will be among 84 teams worldwide competing in Atlanta in April for the championship, sponsored by the Lego Group and For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, a youth science and innovation organization started by Segway founder Dean Kamen.

In a separate research project, the Lexington team studied the decline of bluefin tuna in the Boston and Tsukiji (Tokyo) markets, proposing a tuna-tagging plan to reverse overfishing and slow some climate effects. The theme of the research part of the competition this year is global warming.

Pictured above are team members, from left, Ben Oye, Geoff Ramseyer, Jenny Ramseyer, Chris Perry, Eliot Han, Josh Pachter, Edward Shin. Not pictured: Ben Donahue and Paige Harris.

The seven-member Leominster Robotics Team outpointed Lexington, and Jonathan Route, who coordinates the program, compared it to a team going to the Little League World Series.

"It's really a big deal,'' Route told the Sentinel and Enterprise newspaper. To read more, click here.