Bangladesh youths shine at FIRST Global Robotic Challenge 2020

Every year, youths from around the world come together in FIRST Global to express their ignited passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

FIRST Global is an annual international robotics challenge that aims to inspire the youth of the world to pursue STEM education and facilitate learning. It is established by the inventor and entrepreneur, Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST. The challenge is often referred to as the high school level robot Olympics, with participation from almost all the countries of the world, said a press release.

"It is to our knowledge the largest robotics competition for high school students in the world with more countries participating than any other competition," the release added.

Bangladesh has been participating in the FIRST Global Challenge since its inception in 2017. Team Bangladesh has been on a journey to the top ranks of the challenge, from ranking in the hundreds to ranking 7th among 190 countries in the 2019 FIRST Global Challenge, which was hosted in Dubai.

Every year these STEM lovers of the world are given a challenge that is intended to solve some of the greatest challenges of Earth, including the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering. In 2019, the challenge was Ocean Opportunities, to highlight the problems of pollution of the Earth’s oceans. Team Bangladesh came out of the tournament as quarter-finalists. You can find the ranking information on this link: https://first.global/archive/fgc-2019/ (please scroll down and click rankings).

This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants from 174 countries are engaged in several social and technical challenges from their home country, and Bangladesh has maintained a steady 1st ranking for the past 9 weeks as of the 2nd of September, 2020. You can find the ranking details for this year’s challenge here: https://first.global/cc/ (please scroll down to find the rankings).

While the teams have changed throughout the years, it is with the hard work and dedication of previous teams that the new team is able to learn from, grow and perform better. The outcomes speak for themselves as Team Bangladesh has improved by leaps and bounds in their performance, from 2017 to 2020. This year, the team is 13 people strong, consisting of Sujoy, Razeen, Zarif, Shahrear, Abrar, Aymaan, Bianca, Zahraa, Areebah, and Farin with chief mentor Shams Jaber and technical mentor Shoaib Mirza and Fardin Ananta as the assistant mentor.

FIRST Global’s mission is to inspire the youth of the world to engage in STEM learning. It encourages qualities such as teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving, and excites the children to learn and boosts creativity from a young age. The organization also intends to convince the leaders and governments of the world to adopt STEM education and support them through investing in their youth that will go on to make their marks in the world.