2022 The Girls of Steel Year in Review
The Girls of Steel accomplished a lot in 2022 even though we started off the year virtually for just about all of January. The team ended 2022 ready for the 2023 season of Charged Up which began on January 7, 2023!
January
Even though CMU shut down in person meetings for January, we were excited for the Rapid React kickoff on January 8th which was the start of the FRC build season. The Girls of Steel persisted with several weeks of build season meetings on Zoom and focused primarily on designing their robot. On their return to meeting at the practice field, the team was ready to build their 2022 robot.
Our second season of Rosie Talks kicked off with Season 2 Session 1 in December 2021 and we held Session 2 this month on January 16th. Our speakers were team member Aditi Srivastava who is now attending Carnegie Mellon University, and Girls of Steel alum, Naoka Gunawardena who attended Yale University and is now an Engineering Project Manager at DEKA Research and Development.
February
Our amazing parent volunteers and mentors planned and built the 2022 FRC Rapid React Practice Field for us. Throughout the year we hosted multiple local teams who used our practice field for testing their robots.
Rosie Talks Season 2 Session 3 was held on February 13, 2022 and our speakers were team member, Somdata Basu who is now attending Penn State University, and mentor, Maggie Hansen, a PhD student in robotics at Carnegie Mellon.
On February 26th the BuzzBand team hosted a hybrid Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams Mid-Grant Technical Review showcase event at the practice field. We welcomed dozens of in-person and virtual guests to the event which began with a formal presentation and was followed by table demonstrations of the many elements of the InvenTeam, including Test Administration, Electronics and Programming, Media, Finance, Sustainability, Design, Expansion & Outreach. Check out the blogs on both our website and the InvenTeams site.
March
We showcased several Girls of Steel teams and special projects at our meeting on March 5, 2022 with Congressman Mike Doyle at the Practice Field. The Congressman met with members of the FRC and FTC teams as well as with members of the BuzzBand and COVIDcast projects teams. Read about it here and here.
Rosie Talks Season 2 Session 4 was held on March 13, 2022 and our speakers were team member Alex George who is now attending Olin College of Engineering and Girls of Steel Alum Samantha Eppinger, who attended Olin and now works at Teradyne as a Mechanical and Thermal Engineer.
We attended back-to-back FRC Competitions this year. The first one was at Cal U for the Greater Pittsburgh Regional event March 17-19, 2022. We hosted a FIRST Ladies Women in STEM panel event featuring FRC team members and mentors, and we were thrilled to qualify for FIRST World Championships by receiving the Engineering Inspiration Award.
CalU Blog post: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/2022-build-season-competition-season-update-1/
Next was the Buckeye Regional at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland Ohio March 24-26, 2022. We hosted an informal FIRST Ladies meet-up at Buckeye, and we were excited to receive the 2022 Buckeye Regional Chairman’s Award which qualified the team again for FIRST World Championships in Houston!
Buckeye Blog Post: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/2022-build-season-competition-season-update-2-buckeye/
April
Rosie Talks Season 2 Session 5 was held on April 10, 2022 and our speakers were team member Ella Maier who now attends Notre Dame, and Girls of Steel mentor, Bella Ferranti, a mechanical engineering PhD student at Carnegie Mellon.
For the first time ever, the Girls of Steel traveled by air as a team to a FIRST event – we attended the FIRST World Championships Houston TX on April 20-23, 2022. We are grateful to our many wonderful parent volunteers who chaperoned the event for us. https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/2022-build-season-competition-season-update-3-worlds/
May
The GoS Year-End Picnic was held on Sunday, May 15th to celebrate the season and our seniors! After a two-year gap due to the pandemic, we celebrated in person at a picnic shelter in O’Hara Township. Overall, everyone had a great time and all agreed that celebrating at a team picnic is preferred over a more formal event.
June
Our BuzzBand team traveled to Cambridge MA for the annual Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams EurekaFEST event at MIT where they showcased the BuzzBand at a demo table and gave a formal presentation to other InvenTeams and guests at EurekaFest. We are grateful for the support of Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney for filing the BuzzBand patent application before the provisional patent expired. https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/girls-of-steel-inventeams-update-8-eurekafest/
July
We welcomed our new lead technical mentor: Elizabeth Kysel, a founding member of GoS. She returned to Pittsburgh after receiving a BA in Computer Science from Wellesley College and teaching for 4 years at the Park School in Baltimore MD. In addition to teaching, she also led the Park School’s robotics team, FRC 1719, The Umbrella Corporation. Welcome back, Liz!
Meeting NASA CTO Dr. Bhavya Lal was another highlight of July.
August
We hosted our summer camps in person this year for the first time since 2019!
- Introduction to Scratch Camp was held August 8-10, 2022
- FLL Skills Camp ran August 15-19, 2022
- Girls of Steel Hackathon Junior (GoSHacksJr) followed the FLL camp and was held on August 20, 2022.
In addition to our annual camps we connected with the Black Girls Drone camp at Wilkinsburg’s Hosanna House (July 7 and 8) as well as with kids at a STEAM camp July 12-14 at Pittsburgh’s Lincoln Elementary. Read about all our summer outreach activities here in our Highlights of 2022 Summer Outreach blog.
The Girls of Steel FTC teams kicked off on August 25, 2022, well before FTC kickoff on September 10th. The FTC teams are off to a great start this year!
Fun Fact: We were interviewed for an article in Reinvented Magazine, a print and digital magazine that is available to order here.
September
FRC kicked off preseason with the new girl meeting on September 6th, two weeks earlier than usual. The earlier start time gave the team 14 weeks of preseason instead of 12. In June our BuzzBand team finished their year as a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam, but with new members added to the hive, they are still busy buzzing.
FLL Challenge teams started off in person for the first time since 2019! Our FLL program kicked off on September 10, 2022 with 32 boys and girls in grades 4 to 8 from 18 different schools and home schools.
October
At the Pittsburgh Open Streets event in June we connected with WQED about participating in their Teachable Moments video series. Our media division lead wrote a script for a one minute video about kids and teamwork and then WQED filmed us at the the practice field. You can view it here: iQ Smartparent Teachable Moments: Girls of Steel | Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!
Our team was filmed for The Economist’s Now and Next video series. View it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=5Y5moVvzayc
November
FRC Preseason Update #1: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/2022-2023-frc-preseason-update-1/
FTC Update #1 https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/girls-of-steel-ftc-9820-and-9821-2022-2023-ftc-update-1-team-progress/
The FLL Challenge teams attended a Competitive Scrimmage event at the Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy.
We attended and hosted a demo at the Robotics Discovery Day event at the David Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh on November 16, 2022. We connected with a lot of robotics teams, robotics companies, and people interested in robotics. Here’s an article about the event: https://technical.ly/software-development/pittsburgh-robotics-network-discovery-day-2022-pictures/
We had exceptional crowdfunding results this year and raised $12,837! Check out the crowdfunding video here. 2022 CMU Giving Day Crowdfunding Video
December
The FTC team attended a scrimmage event on December 3rd and they wrote about it the team update here: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/2022-2023-ftc-9820-and-9821-update-2-team-progress/
The FLL Challenge Championship Competition was held on December 9 and 10. The teams set up their pits and were judged on December 9th and then on Saturday all the teams competed in the robot game. It was a fun event! The FLL team captains put together this blog post: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/girls-of-steel-2022-fll-challenge-superpowered/
Our annual Dean Day All hands meeting was featured in a Girls of Steel TikTok video. The final update of the preseason covers the holiday party on December 11th and all the subteams – both business and tech. Read all about it here: https://girlsofsteelrobotics.com/news/2022-2023-frc-preseason-update-2/
Our outreach events for the year are listed on our website.
