BOCA RATON, Fla. — If it's building a robot, 17-year-old Megan Enriquez will figure out a way.
“I’ve always really liked math and science classes in school,” said Enriquez.
She's a part of a robotics team called the Dirty Mechanics. They entered the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST is an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
"Students and mentors are challenged to build an industrial robot in six weeks and then compete in regional competitions,” she said.
Enriquez showed us what Mando the robot can do.
"To shoot the ball, this just spins at a really high speed," she said. "Engineering is a lot about teamwork working together all of the time so being a great collaborator is essential with FIRST."
Teams competed from around the world. Enriquez is one of the winners.
"One of them is from Australia, there's some from Alaska—all across the world, and they are all super passionate,” she said.
Her mentor, Keith Glasnapp, is proud of her.
"It gives her opportunities for scholarships, it gives her an opportunity to apply to schools like MIT, very prestigious university will go after people who have the Dean's List award," he said. "We've tried to recruit more girls than boys. In fact, I think our team has pretty much an even split maybe even had more girls at times."
Megan said she wants to be a mechanical engineer.
"I wanted to be an engineer from when I was a 4th grader and I didn’t even know what the word meant or what they really did,” she said.
