RoHawks Earn Industrial Design Award on the Global Stage at the 2026 FIRST® World Championship

From April 29–May 2, the RoHawks, Team 3419 of Hunter College High School, competed on the international stage at the 2026 FIRST® Championship presented by BAE Systems in Houston, Texas.

The FIRST Championship is the culminating event of the robotics competition season, bringing together more than 600 teams from around the nation and world. Teams competed across eight divisions inside a massive arena, with each division named after a renowned scientist.

This year, one division was named in honor of Marie Maynard Daly, the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry and a proud Hunter College High School Class of 1938 alumna, making the event especially meaningful for the HCHS community.

Competing in the Milstein Division, the RoHawks earned the Industrial Design Award in recognition of their unique “Hopperless” robot design and innovative engineering approach. Their award-winning robot featured a Turret-Style Shooter, allowing precise scoring from multiple angles without rotating the entire robot, along with Dynamic Targeting technology that used onboard cameras to continuously track targets and automatically adjust shooting variables for accurate scoring, even while in motion.

Earlier this season, the RoHawks were finalists at the NYC Regional Competition, where they received the Excellence in Engineering Award and the FIRST Leadership Finalist Award.

The team extends its gratitude to AllianceBernstein and mentor Adam Salem for their continued dedication and support, along with HCHS alumni mentors Matt Wong ’11 and Axel Feldman ’15, Advisor Ms. Ong Ante, and HCCS Director Lisa Siegmann for helping make this extraordinary season possible.