Itkan Institute of Technology
In 2022, I founded Itkan Institue of Technology, a non profit organization that aims to inspire kids age (4-18) to learn more about Science, technology, Engineering and Mathematics through robotics. Our effort is focused on underserved, under-represented communities in the United States and the World, esp. Muslims. We achieve that by forming several FLL, FTC and FRC teams that compete in FIRST international competition. Our goal is to construct a network between these kids where they exchange experience and help each other understand the different aspects of Technology.
The Marvels, Champions of NM Regionals 2020-2021
Inspire Award Winners
This judged award is given to the team that best embodies the ‘challenge’ of the FIRST Tech Challenge program. The team that receives this award is a strong ambassador for FIRST programs and a role model FIRST team. This team is a top contender for many other judged awards and is a gracious competitor. The Inspire Award winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism both on and off the playing field. This team shares their experiences, enthusiasm and knowledge with other team, sponsors, their community, and the judges. Working as a unit, this team will have showed success in performing the task of designing and building a robot.
Here is what the judges say about our winning team:
You have to admire this team for the energy and commitment they bring to NM FTC and FIRST. Their journey as ambassadors went far beyond the state extending the hand of friendship and Gracious Professionalism around the world. They are a Marvelous member of our FTC family. The inspire award goes to Team #14571, The Marvels!
Meet Our Robot for this season, Vision 2021
Our robot design philosophy was centered around modularity. This allowed our team to easily design, modify and test each component independently. Our robot for this season, Vision 2021, consists of 4 main modules: The moving base, the intake, the shooter and the arm.
Using Creo Parametric 7.0, our team brought Vision 2021 to life digitally. This helped us learn about bugs in our design before the building process starts.
Check out our robot reveal video here: https://youtu.be/IMOmRUyhMOo
Starting an international stem awareness movement!
After posting about our team and being updated on the many zoom calls we were hosting for groups all around the world, Ramzy Abdelaziz, a Facebook influencer, requested to host a Facebook live with our team. Ecstatic, our team quickly arranged a date and created flyers for Dr. Abdelaziz’s team to commercialize. The live was viewed by 20k people, And watched Actively by People from 21 different Countries!
This led to the creation of the MARVELS Community Facebook group, open for inquiries about robotics globally.
The Marvels in the news
SIGGRAPH BLOG
An article in SIGGRAPH blog was written in August 2019 featuring the accomplishment of our robotics team and how attending SIGGRAPH impacted two of our team members. You can read the full article here.