Local team wins robotics contest in Netherlands

A robotics-savvy group of students from the North Hills won the First Tech Challenge European Premier Event 2025 held over the Fourth of July weekend in the Netherlands.

Team 8393, or the Giant Diencephalic BrainSTEM Robotics Team, created a robot that was both autonomous and driver-based, performing various exercises against other teams during the event. Team 8393 consistently won matches against other teams, ultimately securing the tournament victory.

“It was a great experience with a competitive and lasting environment. Winning the entire tournament was amazing from the hours of hard work we put in throughout the entire season,” said Avyukt Iyer, a North Allegheny senior.

The BrainSTEM team has won more than 270 First Tech Challenge and seven First Robotics Challenge competitions over 10-plus years.

The team includes Zach Manczka, a senior at North Catholic; freshman Aayush Iyer and seniors Avyukt Iyer, Pranav Bandi, Sameer Ghosalia, all of North Allegheny; Piya Dargan, a sophomore at Pine-Richland; and Shivum Telang, a junior at North Allegheny. Former team members Prisha Dargan, a 2025 Pine-Richland graduate, and Karthik Palled, a 2025 North Allegheny graduate, also attended.

Team members Özge Uzman, a junior at Shady Side Academy; Keerthana Visveish, a sophomore at Pine-Richland; and twins Seoni Gandhi and Kaya Gandhi, both freshmen at North Allegheny, could not attend because of other commitments.

The team is part of BrainSTEM Learning, based in Marshall, and is coached by Gordon Walton, a Marshall resident.

This year’s First Tech competition required robots to complete tasks such as collecting “samples” or clips, placing balls into different baskets and finally hanging itself from a rung off the ground, said Piya Dargan, 15.

The robots were designed and built by the students.

Various competitions are held throughout the year, qualifying teams to the next level of meets. Thus, the teams are always rebuilding and modifying robots to meet the specifications of a certain competition.

The team’s mantra is “pleased but not satisfied,” said Ghosalia, 17.

Aayush Iyer, 14, Avyukt’s brother, enjoyed competing against other countries. The group was paired with a team from Romania for some of the matches.

The team also took third place in the Inspire Award, which judges competitors based on community outreach. Some of Team 8393’s community outreach includes hosting STEM programs in underserved communities and creating programming for children with autism and other disabilities. They also designed a software tool for children with cortical visual impairment that helps them navigate the world around them.

Over the past year, the students hosted a Lego Superhero Day for kids in transitional housing and started an inner-city Pittsburgh First Lego League. The BrainSTEM team also implemented its Robots Without Borders programming, taking STEM to areas nationally and internationally.

This included sharing STEM and robotics educational programming to a high school in Belize and leukemia patients in Turkey. They also made contributions to Haiti’s H20 Mission.

Many of the members got their start in First Lego League, a global program focused on STEM learning for youths with hands-on activities and competitions.

The BrainSTEM team became the first First Lego League regional partner and regularly hosts competitions.

While it was a lot of work, the experience was fun and exciting, they said.

“It’s a lot of emotions. There’s not a calm second. You’re always working for something. You’re always finding small things to fix. Until that very last moment, it’s definitely a frenzy,” Bandi said.

Avyukt Iyer, 16, said they competed against some of the best teams, really testing their skills.

Manczka, 17, agreed.

“It was a bit of surprise. All of the matches were close,” he said.

Team 8393 evolves as some students graduate and new students join. It has been competing in the First Tech Challenge for 11 seasons, and a total of 41 official events since 2019.

The team wanted to thank Walton.

“He’s put in enormous amounts of hours as a coach,” Dargan said.

Terry Faber and David Whitmer also are coaches for the team.

Along with other successes, the robots performed near-perfect scores during the autonomous-driving portion in many of the matches, which is significant, Walton said.

“They played really well,” said Walton, whose son James works at Astrobotic Technology in Pittsburgh and daughter Christina is a student at Stanford University.

He provides space for the students to collaborate, design, build and practice their robots.

“We really had everything come together. We were hard to stop,” Walton said.

In 2023, several of the team members — Avyukt Iyer, Bandi and Uzman — also placed in the top four at the International First Tech Challenge World Championship in Houston.

The team currently is working on a robot that weighs 115 pounds, requiring it to complete various tasks on a playing field the size of a basketball court for an upcoming competition.