[JesseK]

Finder and adoptor of our robot mascot, Paws -- at VCU I found this stuffed kitten looking like it was ready to pounce. Of all places, it was at the VA science museum. The next day I zip-tied some safety goggles to it and Paws was born. It's fitting because this year the one thing that works better than anything else is the set of "paws" that are meant to "pounce" over the ball. We haven't been able to figure out if the mascot is good or bad luck yet because the rest of the bot has had a lot of problems...but Philly saw a lot of changes on Sat. and Atlanta will see major improvements...

Inventor of new words for the English language -- I once convinced a couple of young students that "brothe" is a real word and is past-tense for the verb "breathe". I also started a ban on dihydrogenated monoxide right before the VA FTC competition last December.

Believer in the insane, impossible, and otherwise impractical ideas our team comes up with -- because every idea we brainstorm each year is successfully done by some team somewhere. It's prohibitively difficult to explain how some ideas work when we think of them though, so most of the other non-mechanical-type engineers wind up shooting ideas down since they're "too complicated", "too quirky", or "I just don't understand it". Even so, I'm able to convince many of the students of the merits of some of the ideas and get them interested in at least prototyping before they say "no".