Whiz kids from NYC school headed to prestigious robotics championship — after $6K NASA grant

A group of whiz kids from a small Manhattan public school will go head-to-head with hundreds of other students from around the world in a prestigious robotics championship this month — after they won a $6,000 grant from NASA.

The tech prodigies from West End Secondary School (WESS) on the Upper West Side will compete in the FIRST Robotics Championship in Houston, held on April 17 through April 20, even though they only formed their robotics team less than a year ago.

The team is headed to the finals after their disc-throwing robot was one of just five out of fifty-two designs selected to head to the finals at the recent New York City regionals.

“I’m a little nervous, but I’m mostly excited,” one of the team’s co-founders, Sonia Benowitz, 14, told The Post Wednesday.

The WESS crew — who will now compete against the most elite high schools globally that specialize in STEM, including Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School — also edged out other newcomers in the regionals for the coveted Rookie All-Star award.

The award was a huge boost for the team, which was only started in September 2023 by Benowitz and fellow WESS 9th graders Talia Birnbaum, Alexander Cawdron and Annabelle Malschin.

“Me and my friends were like, why don’t we make this a high school program?” Birnbaum, 14, said of how they got the team going after enjoying WESS’ Lego robotics club in middle school.

The newly-formed team even received a $6,000 registration grant from NASA’s Robotics Alliance Project, which funds fledgling robotics clubs, Benowitz’s mom, Samantha Alvarez Benowitz, said.

The WESS robotics team was the only New York City-area applicant chosen for the honor, the proud parent noted.

The team also received a $2,500 cash injection from the Gene Hass Foundation and has sponsorships from Bloomberg and a WESS parent, Alvarez Benowitz said.

The clever kids even inspired an elective class at their school.

“When we first proposed the high school robotics team, they really loved the idea and they were like, ‘Hey, do you want to make this an elective?’ And we’re like, of course, we want to make it an elective!” Birnbaum explained.

“And on top of that, we’re officially recognized as a club so we get to have school hours and afterschool hours that we can use for robotics work,” she added.

“We meet every day after school, usually on Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays,” 14-year-old Cawdron said.

The team’s disc-throwing robot is the result of about nine hours of work per week over about three months, Benowitz estimated.

“There are three different teams: mechanical, programming, and operations,” Cawdron told The Post.

Cawdron, Birnbaum, and Benowitz are all on the mechanical team in charge of building the robot.

Last week’s regional competition was the group’s first chance to debut their robot outside of the workshop.

In addition to disc throwing, the robot also has a “climber” mechanism, Benowitz said.

“It basically has two hooks that can lift the entire robot off the ground and onto a chain,” the teen explained.

About 12 or 13 team members are expected to make the trip to Houston, Birnbaum said.

The team is shipping their materials with the team from Stuyvesant High School in order to cut down costs.

“Right now we’re just trying to make as many modifications to the robot as possible and if there are any parts that we need to order we’re ordering them now because we have to ship it by Friday,” Benowitz explained.

“We’re probably gonna do a lot of our building and modifications in Houston, but we’re getting as much done now.”

The price tag for the international championships amounts to a whopping $40,000, which the team is raising money to cover through bake sales and other fundraising, Alvarez Benowitz said.

The supportive mom said New Yorkers can help by donating to the WESS Parents Association.

“This is not just competing, it’s a learning experience,” Birnbaum said of the upcoming Championship.

“You can see how incredible all these teams can be. And basically, the reason why they give out [the Rookie Award] is because they want us to see what other teams can accomplish, what they can learn,” she continued.

“We know we won’t be beating every single team there, that’s just unrealistic for our first year. We just hope to have fun getting our show the experience, and hopefully the robot works,” Cawdron added.

“Our team is very small, like a little family,” he added.

All three students said their experience with the WESS robotics team already has them thinking about their future.

“I do find STEM a very interesting field…I have always just found building things fun, my entire life,” Cawdron said.

Benowitz said that she was considering engineering, while Birnbaum said she is also looking to be “an engineer or a researcher.”

“And that’s pretty much all because of robotics,” she told The Post.

“So, I’m really thankful that I was able to find something that I really liked doing.”