Gharib receives Outstanding Mentor Award at FIRST Global Challenge 2019
Published Nov 06, 2019
Dr. Mohamed Gharib has received the Outstanding Mentor Award for leading Team Qatar in robotics in the FIRST Global Challenge 2019 among teams from 191 countries in this year’s competition. The Outstanding Mentor Award is given to mentors who were committed to their students and inspired them to keep going, despite any challenges.
The FIRST Global Challenge invites each country to send a team to compete in a Robotics Olympics, which is based on the 14 Grand Challenges of Engineering identified by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Team Qatar were allowed to compete in this year’s FIRST Global Challenge via video since they could not attend the competition in Dubai in person.
Team Qatar consisted of 14 high school students from 11 different schools in Qatar who worked as part of the STEM Hub Robotics Club (SHRC) initiative at Texas A&M University at Qatar in cooperation with Qatar National Research Fund. Gharib started the SHRC in 2019 to use robotics to enhance, supplement and enrich science and math learning experiences for secondary students; to put together a team of talented students from different schools in Qatar whose interests are in engineering in general and robotics in particular; and to prepare the students to participate in international competitions representing Qatar.