Da Vinci Science Charter High School was founded in 2009, with a focus on engineering and project-based learning. As our school grew, it was only a matter of time until a group of thirty students came together to found our FIRST Robotics Competition team in 2012. We were very lucky because Fazlul "Fuz" Zubair, a systems engineer at Raytheon, contacted our teacher mentor to volunteer his help. Fuz had been mentoring for FRC teams through Raytheon's outreach program. He first assisted a veteran team that had plenty of mentors to help with the creation of the robot for the 2011 competition. Because of this experience, Fuz felt he could do more by helping a rookie team that did not have the same resources provided to them. His leadership and motivation allowed our rookie team to excel and to take huge leaps in building our robot for the years to come.
From day one, Fuz made sure that we were on the right track. He helped us familiarize ourselves with the design process, and made sure we understood how important prototyping is before finalizing parts on our robot. He separated us into smaller teams where each of us would present on a potential design and explore all the components of a competition. As each team presented our ideas, he provided insightful questions on the weaknesses of each design and challenged us to think of ways we could solve those problems. After a week of creating CAD models and prototyping, he would have us come together to present our new designs. When the final robot design was decided, we
then broke off into teams based on one of the robot's functions. With that in mind, Fuz had us present a preliminary design review where everyone pitched ideas in order to have a say in developing the robot. As a result, Fuz helped us communicate and plan effectively in the design process.
For the current season, we were facing new challenges such as new sensors, pneumatics, and vision processing. Fuz encouraged us to give it our all and would always be around to offer guidance. Whenever he found something interesting, he would email us and asked about our opinions, such as running vision processing through our dashboard or different uses for pneumatics. These resources he offered allowed us to discover and fix the problems with our robot. Whether we had problems with our hardware or software, Fuz made sure we isolated each component in order to discover what was wrong. Because of this, Fuz helped us learn to work efficiently in order to meet our team deadlines.
Because of the guidance and knowledge Fuz has brought to our team, we could not think of anyone else who deserves the honor of the Woodie Flowers award more than he does. Whether it was bringing donuts for a long day or calibrating the robot, Fuz became a role model for each of us to be positive for the growth our team has gone through for the past three years. Because of him we are more than a group of kids with similar interests, we are team 4201, the Vitruvian Bots.
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