Aditya Chittari (Robot Genius) was the lead programmer for The Lego Lords, the FIRST Lego League team that represented Ohio at the 2018 World Championship. He has four years of experience teaching LEGO robotics.
Ashton Cofer (Master Robot Genius) attends Columbus Academy high school. Ashton has 5 years of experience competing in FIRST LEGO League on the Incredibots team, and his team has had much success around the world, including winning the 1st Place Champions Award at the 2016 FLL World Championship, and 2nd Place Champions Award at the 2014 Open European Championship. Ashton also has 6 years of experience teaching robotics workshops at local schools, science museums, scouting groups, and public events. He has won several national STEM competitions with his team and presented at the 2015 and 2016 White House Science Fairs. Overall, Ashton loves working with robots and enjoys sharing it with others!
Chris Henricksen (Classroom Manager) holds degrees in Political Science (B.A.) and Education (M.Ed.) from The Ohio State University. He has worked as an educator for over 20 years. Chris taught Computer Literacy to 6th, 7th and 8th graders in Mansfield City Schools before joining Westerville City Schools in 2007 as a 5th grade Science teacher. In 2012, Chris was honored as Invention Convention's Columbus-area "Teacher of Excellence". Two years later, he sailed for 10 days aboard the NOAA research vessel, Henry B. Bigelow, as a "Teacher at Sea", assisting onboard scientists in surveying marine organism populations in the Gulf of Maine and George's Bank. Prior to becoming a teacher, Chris worked as a Systems Consultant for an international technology company, and served in the US Navy. He is thrilled to join Robot Academy and looks forward to working with youngsters interested in the challenges and rewards inherent to the STEM fields.
Mann Arora (Robot Genius) was the Core Values Enforcer for The Lego Lords, the FIRST Lego League team that represented Ohio at the 2018 World Championship. He has won several awards as a science olympiad, including 3rd place at the 2018 state competition.
Gail Vawter "LEGO Lady" (Co-founder and Camp Director) holds degrees in Computer Science and Economics from Denison University as well as an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan. She has worked in the Information Technology industry for over 20 years. As a teacher and coach of student science teams, she has won numerous national and global awards with FIRST Lego League (FLL), NSTA/Toshiba ExploraVision, Christopher Columbus Awards, NASA Space Day, US Army’s eCybermission, National Gallery for Young Inventors, and more. Her team’s inventions were recognized by the Ohio Senate and Ohio House of Representatives. Gail also judges for FLL and other National competitions, teaches Lego Robotics after-school programs, and has fun providing students with fun and rewarding experiences.
Gina Clepper (Master Robot Genius) Gina is studying Engineering at Purdue University and is a true Robot Genius. In middle school, she won numerous FIRST LEGO League tournaments: 2009 and 2011 Ohio State Championship; 2009 FLL World Championship Finalist; 2011 North American Open Tournament (2nd place Robot Performance and 2nd place Research Award). In high school, she was the 2014 Buckeye Regional finalist with FIRST Robotics Competition and the 2014 Grand Prize winner with MoonBots (Lego Robots). She has also led various robotics workshops and been a counselor for Camp Invention. She loves STEM and teaching others, but most of all she loves seeing crazy, creative ideas turn into reality!
Julie Bray (Master Robot Genius) competed in First Lego League with The Incredibots for 3 years. During this time, they went the Open European Championship in Spain and won the 2nd place champions award. They also got to go to Legoland in California and St. Louis for the World Festival where they won 1st place champions! FLL inspired Julie and her team to take their passion for STEM a step further, and they went on to compete in international innovation competitions, such as Google Science Fair and Conrad Spirit of Innovation Summit.
Kara Crowley (Classroom Manager) is a 3rd teacher at Darby Woods Elementary School with 10 years teaching experience and 5 years experience with running Robotics after-school program. Mrs. Crowley presented locally, state-wide and even at the National Science Teachers Association conference in Boston about starting a robotics club at a title one low income school. Mrs. Crowley won COSI teacher of the year, the American Wilderness School scholarship, as well as numerous awards from her school district. In fact, she has accomplished the highest rating possible in the public school. Mrs. Crowley traveled to over 20 countries and has been to 6 out of 7 continents. She was awarded a full ride trip to Shark Bay, Australia from The National Science Foundation to help with research on sharks in the ecosystem. Mrs. Crowley has a true passion to bring STEM education to low income students and young girls.
Michael Vawter "The Robot Guy" (Co-founder and Technology Director) was the mastermind behind the MindStorm Troopers' robots that won first place in the FIRST Lego League in ’05 and ’06 out of 10,000 teams from 39 countries. He has been featured in Popular Science Magazine, Columbus CEO Magazine and the National Gallery for Young Inventors for his work with robotics and education. A Denison graduate, he has published peer-reviewed psychophysics research and is now working on his MBA degree in Entrepreneurship.
Sahithi Thumuluri (Robot Genius) is a freshman at Dublin Jerome High School with interests in science and math since a young age. She has 5 years of FIRST robotics experience under her belt. As a part of FLL team Robot Rights, Sahithi travelled to the Ohio State championships and World Festival many times, winning awards such as Global Innovation Semi-finalists in 2015, 2017 Ohio State Champions, and First-place inspiration at the World Festival in 2017. Sahithi now competes as part of FTC team Moderately Dangerous on the software team. She also participated in multiple Robot Academy camps, and won multiple awards for programming and a robust design. She teaches at Kumon as an instructor for ages 3-16 in the areas of math and reading. Sahithi has won awards such as the NUMATs gifted awards and the Verizon app challenge, and has taken STEM related classes in and out of school. Sahithi is passionate and immensely excited to encourage other young kids to experience the fun of robotics!
Savannah Cofer (Master Robot Genius) graduated from Columbus Academy and is attending Rice University for Engineering. She has the 'magic touch' with Lego Robots. Savannah mentors the Incredibots team that won the 1st Place Champions Award at the 2016 FIRST Lego League World Championship. For the past 9 years, she has won numerous awards at the state and international level in both FIRST LEGO League and the FIRST Tech Challenge. Savannah and her teammates won the Google Lunar X PRIZE MoonBots Challenge in 2014 and were national winners or finalists of several STEM competitions including the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards and the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair. Savannah was invited to the 2016 White House Science Fair to honor her achievements with Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards. Savannah loves mentoring younger teams, teaching robotics workshops, and of course building wicked cool robots.
Soham Joshi (Robot Genius) first learned about Robot academy when I went to one of their camps and I had a blast. I had a lot of fun there building with Legos and I won the Champions Award as well, so I joined one of Coach Vawter’s teams. Doing FLL was a great experience and our team won the innovative solution award a States as well as going all the way to Global Innovation, which are the top 20 teams in the world. I created a team on my own and we won the innovative solution award at State again and have advanced to Global Innovation as well. Our team has also won prizes at Ecybermisison and Exploravision as well. I have been working at Robot Academy for 2 years and I really enjoy working with kids and teaching about all the things I have learned while robot handling in FLL.
Varun Chitiveli (Robot Genius) was the lead builder for The Lego Lords, the FIRST Lego League team that represented Ohio at the 2018 World Championship. He knows several programming languages and is excellent at explaining mechanical design.
Varun Vallabhaneni (Master Robot Genius) graduated from Columbus Academy and is attending the University 
of Pennsylvania. He competed in FIRST Robotics for 7 years with the Incredibots, in which his team competed all over the world including the World Festival, North American Championship, and European Open Championship. During his last season, the team placed 2nd at the European Open Championship in Barcelona, Spain. He participated in the First Tech Challenge for three years in high school, and he has been one of the team co-captains. His team placed in the top 24 teams at the World Festival and have competed at numerous state championships. In 2014, his team won the Google Lunar X PRIZE Moonbots Challenge, and along with numerous national/international STEM awards in science research and entrepreneurship including the Conrad Foundation to the American Society for Engineering Education and the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair. Earlier this year, his team was invited to exhibit at the 2016 White House Science Fair as a result of his experience with materials science research. Robotics has been an integral part of his life, and he loves mentoring other robotics teams and sharing his passion/experiences with younger kids when it comes to robotics and science!
Licensed Teachers - With a teacher:student ratio of 1:6, Robot Academy utilizes additional licensed teachers from local school districts (with full background checks).