IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2013 - 42

Annie Song, Erin Eagen, Alice Huang, Yitao Yu, and William Lam work on a robotics
project.

school with the robots and wanted to
join," she recalls. "There wasn't a spot
for her at the time, but she wanted to
participate so badly that she decided
to 'harass' Coach Bill until one opened
up." Laughing, Eagen says that she and
Erin would follow the team around. "If
they went to the Liberty Science Center, we went there, too." Her hard work
paid off: once a spot was open, Erin
nabbed it.

A Different Viewpoint
For Lam, this type of excitement is
exactly what he hoped to foster when the
team first started. "I look around our
country today and I see a lot of young
people growing up and it disappoints

me that they know nothing about the
world around them. It is especially prevalent with girls, once they get to sixth or
seventh grade. I didn't want to see my
daughters grow up this way." So when
Lam joined the IEEE in 2005, he also
joined WIE. His daughter, Chloe, was
five at the time, and he wanted to see
what engineering programs existed that
were geared toward women. "I think
women have a different way of looking
at problems and creating solutions," he
says. "You don't see enough of that in
the engineering world today."
An electrical engineer who also
holds a master's degree in information
systems and an M.B.A. in technology
management, Lam has always been a

The Exit 5 Robotics team performs outreach to an inner-city middle school.

42

IEEE women in engineering magazine

June 2013	

problem-solver. "I grew up in a Chinese
restaurant where things were always
breaking and I liked fixing them," he
explains, describing himself as "handy."
After college, Lam went to work at AT&T
Bell Laboratories and then a start-up
company before his current role as an
independent consultant.
To the nine girls on the Exit 5 Robotics team, though, his most important
role may be as "Coach William." The
time commitment is heavy, especially
right before competitions and particularly for this team, which has numerous
titles to defend. The team was awarded
first place for robot performance in the
2010 Bergen FLL Regional competition
and third place in the New Jersey State
Finals that same year, along with garnering the State Finals Judges Award.
They won a first place Champions Award
in the 2011 Liberty Science Center FLL
Regionals and a second place Champions
Award in that year's New Jersey State
Finals. In 2012, they placed 17th in the
World Invitational Open competition.
Now the girls are hard at work on the
2013 challenge.
Each year's competition is built
around a theme, and the challenge
tasks to complete consist of two parts:
the Robot Game, where the students
program a robot to perform certain
activities; and the Project, where the
students complete a research project
demonstrating their understanding of the challenge
theme. Through it all, participants are guided by the
FLL Core Values-a list of
"rules to live by" that encourage friendly competition and
teamwork-which are important enough to serve as the
third pillar in the challenge.
T h e 2 01 3 c h a l l e n g e
theme is "Senior Solutions,"
which tasks the teams to
come up with a science and
technology-based innovative
way to improve the quality of life for senior citizens.
Evelyn, an 11-year-old on the
team, explains that the Exit 5
girls have selected an idea



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2013

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