An orgy of local STEM activity flies under the radar

If you follow my Twitter feed you’ll know I spent the wee hours of this morning at the Zero Robotics finals at Sydney Uni. 232 teams from around the World went through rounds of competition which culminated in the finals last night with 14 alliances competing – and five Australian teams got to fly robots on the International Space Station. They controlled robots in Space!

None of the four Australian teams in the main finals won, although James Ruse took out the parallel virtual finals for those who didn’t make it into the main finals. But who cares because: They controlled robots in Space!

But the other thing that stood out was why many of the teams had missing members: The National Computer Science Summer School, the National Youth Science Forum, the Australian Science Olympiad Summer School are all on at the moment.

You know that’s all an absolute flurry of amazing Australian students doing very cool stuff and very few people seem to know any of it is happening. We keep seeing the media banging on about the need for more STEM education in Australia – it’d be nice to see that mirrored in taking some notice of stunning STEM activities and achievements like these.

Everyone involved in Zero Robotics should be proud of both making it happen and competing – especially when enthusiasm was still running high at 3am. But especial congratulations to the students from Mosman High School, Gosford High School, Sydney Technical College, Sydney Boys, and James Ruse. They controlled robots in Space!