States Team Picture

Members


Current Roaster:

Shining is one of the current Co-Captains for the 2024-2025 season and has been on the team for 4 years. She is a senior who is a prominent contributor to code. She was previously on an FLL team, and still enjoys building prototypes of robot designs using legos.

Shining Wang

Shining Wang
Bryan is one of the current Co-Captains for the 2024-2025 season and has been on the team for 4 years. He is a senior and a full-time builder who used to be a coder. He is also one of the drivers for the team. He is a main part of designing the robot and works with the other builders to make those ideas into reality.

Bryan Qi

Bryan Qi
Keshav is a senior on the team and is the current Head of Finance. Keshav emails potential sponsors and negotiates financial support from various companies to fund parts for the robot.

Keshav Gollamundi

Keshav Gollamundi
Ryan or “Dottie” is a junior but a sophomore builder on the team. He is an important part of the builder team who helps create the robot. Ryan enjoys playing volleyball and Fortnite.

Ryan Chen

Ryan Chen
Jack is the current Head of Code of the team and joined as a freshman during the 21-22 season and is now currently a junior. Besides coding, he enjoys lifting and drinking lots of energy drinks.

Jack Liu

Jack Liu
Jonny is a junior on the team and is one of the co-heads of CAD. Jonny enjoys opening digital Pokemon Card packs and is a very energetic and entertaining member of the team, bringing energy to every meeting.

Jonathan Ma

Jonathan Ma
Kaitlin is one of the co-heads of CAD and is a junior. She is a prominent contributor to recording various iterations of each robot design and often tests the feasibility of bot designs using Fusion360.

Kaitlin Manoj

Kaitlin Manoj
Pari is a junior on the team who is the head of media/outreach. She plans out the different media posts we put onto instagram and sets up outreaches with other teams and events.

Pari Narang

Pari Narang
Crystal is the current Head of Build and is a junior but a sophomore on the team. Crystal is a prominent contributor to designing and building the physical bot. Crystal’s favorite fruit is watermelon but she is allergic to it.

Crystal Zeng

Crystal Zeng
Annie is a sophomore on the team who was initially a coder but has now switched to being a full-time builder. One of Annie’s favorite foods are frog legs.

Annie Jiang

Annie Jiang
Arkit is the current Head of Log and is a sophomore on the team. As the Head of Log, Arkit is in charge of documenting progress during meetings and various changes to Code, Build and CAD. Arkit is the inventor of the “live-logging method” and is an avid traveler, having been to over 15 countries.

Arkit Shah

Arkit Shah
Ben is a sophomore coder on the team. He is very good at competition math and being intelligent. Ben is a skilled problem solver and enjoys swimming.

Benjamin Sun

Benjamin Sun
Jason joined the team in the 2024-2025 season as a coder and is a freshman. He is the younger brother of co-captain Bryan Qi. Jason likes playing a specific line from the song Coffee by BoywithUke.

Jason Qi

Jason Qi
Daniel is a freshman joining the team during the 2024-2025 season and is a builder. He enjoys swimming and martial arts and is the younger brother of Emerald Knights Alumni Jessica and Rachel Su.

Daniel Su

Daniel Su
Allison is a freshman on the team and joined the team during the 2024-2025 season and is a CADer. She enjoys listening to kpop and watching anime for men with white hair. Allison says she is very nonchalant.

Allison Zhou

Allison Zhou

Coaches:

Mr. Van Pelt is currently our coach starting from 2022. He teaches AP Computer Science Applications at Livingston High School. He is a very supportive coach and frequently checks in on the various teams at Livingston High School to keep them on track.

Mr. Van Pelt

MVP
Mr. Karpack has been our coach starting from 2022 to present. He teaches Tech and Design at Livingston High School. He has a plethora of knowledge to offer, and he encourages the team to host weekly check-ins to keep us progressing through the season productively.

Mr. Karpack

Karpack
Ms. Ziobro was an engineering and architectural CAD teacher at our school, and our coach from 2019-2021. She had a plethora of ideas to help our team, and always tried to help us stay on track. With her help, we've become a much more organized and streamlined team, using CAD to plan out all of our ideas. She has also been helpful in helping raise awareness for the team, recommending students of hers to join our team. She is also really supportive, even when the team faces a tough loss after a competition.

Ms. Ziobro

Ziobro
Mr. Micciche was a tech and computer science principles teacher at our school, and our coach from 2018-2020. He was super laid-back and chill, which made him an amazing teacher (even if the administrators disagree). Even though he had a lot of work, he always found time for us to help us out, especially with 3D printing. Early in the season, he often has a lot of insight and ideas to help us draft a robot idea and get off the ground.

Mr. Micciche

Micciche
Mr. Novotny was our coach from 2016-2018. He imparted upon us many a deep wisdom and taught us the “practical” side of robotics. He still is a large influence on the FTC community, often using his time to volunteer as a judge at FIRST competitions and has been here since almost the inception of FTC as a coach for the Lancers.

Mr. Novotny

Novotny

Alumni:

:/ Jessica has been on the team since the 2020-2021 season and is the current head of finance. She works mainly with building the robot, reaching out to sponsors, and maintaining the finance sub-team. In her free time, Jessica likes eating, being indecisive, and watch animal videos. 👌

Jessica Su

Jessica Su
Andrew is the current head of code for Emerald Knights and has been on the team since the 2021-2022 season. He enjoys implementing interesting mathematical ideas into code. Outside of robotics, he is apart of the school's marching band, enjoys playing music and an active competitive programmer.

Andy Hong

Andy Hong
Daniel is a builder for EK and has been on the team since the 2021-2022 season. He also enjoys competitive swimming.

Daniel Li

Daniel Li
Olivia is currently one of the co-Captains, Head of Logbook and Head of Build. She’s also driver 2 of the driving team. Olivia has been on the team for 3 years and is currently a Junior.

Olivia Mei

Olivia Mei
Current Co-Captain for the 2022-2023 season and Head Of CAD and Design for the 2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023 seasons. Joined Emerald Knights in 2019 as a Builder and CADder, before transitioning to a full time CADder. Loves to design and 3D-print anything he can think of, including optical illusions, puzzles, and miniature top hats.

Ryan Stern

Ryan Stern
Ryan was both the head of code and captain in the 2021-2022 season. His experiences include competition coding, teaching problem solving classes, and being smart. Outside of robotics, he enjoys running, math, and sleeping early. He is also a critical thinker as he often contemplates deep topics such as the existence of yellow apples. Ryan is not only a great team member but also a supportive friend.

Ryan Wu

Ryan Wu
Amanda was the head of build and a co-captain of EK during the 2021-22 season. Now, Amanda is a senior who mentors new builders. In her free time, Amanda likes to sew and do crafts.

Amanda Bialick

Amanda Bialick
Zach has been a builder and logbook scribe since 2019. He likes to explain how the robot works to newer members and nonmembers and volunteer his time doing menial tasks, both during meetings and at outreach events. This includes logging every detail into the team's logbook, no matter how insignificant the detail is. Outside of Robotics, he is very active in Archery, Marching Band, and running during Cross Country and Track.

Zach Canent

Zach Cantent
Lanz is a third year builder and logbook writer for Emerald Knights #10582. He helps identify problems and maintain the robot. He also helps write a bulk of the logbook and engineering portfolio. His loose personality reflects the relaxed nature of the rest of the team.

Lanz Canent

Lanz Cantent
Ming Ma is a senior member of the team who helps out in multiple aspects like build, CAD, finance, and outreach. As a senior, he helps mentor other younger members while guiding them through tough tasks like obtaining sponsorships and building mechanisms. Besides robotics, Ming also participates in 3 seasons of varsity sports with soccer, winter track, and spring track.

Ming Ma

Ming Ma
Brandon Kim is a senior and a builder and CADer for EK. Brandon plans to pursue engineering in his future.

Brandon Kim

Brandon Kim
Julia participated in EK from 2021-2023 as a part of the build team. Her favorite part of robotics have been the hands on and creative aspects, and she also enjoys joking along with the team. In her free time she enjoys rereading Harry Potter and listening to music.

Julia Zhang

Julia Zhang
Erica is a coder for EK and has been on the team since 2019. She often likes playing instruments during meetings. She also enjoys using HuTao in Genshin Impact. She is also a tour de force for the EK team, bubbling with new ideas for the team.

Erica Wang

Erica Wang
Andrew is a coder on EK who has been on the team since 2019. He wants to study Computer Science in college. Evidently enough, he is also the only coder currently to have passed AP Computer Science A.

Andrew Chan

Andrew Chan
Killian has been a builder since 2019. He is friends with BoWei. He likes playing mobile games on his phone and watching LPL destroy every other region in League.

Killian Deng

Killian Deng
Perry was a cadder and builder on EK during the 2020-21 season. He chose to join because of EK's flexible schedule, and used cad to create rough prototypes of the robot. After the CAD is done, he usually helps build as a portable slave. Unfortunately, Perry had to move to England, where he now is apart of FTC Team 1884 and 1797, the Griffins and Phoenix. In his free time, Perry swims, does Cross Country, and plays Destiny 2.

Perry Chen

Perry Chen
Heainz was a member on EK from 2019-2020. He was a coder, but also did a lot of other tasks like making a capstone. He showed up to outreaches regularly, including one in Warren to teach 3rd graders. Apparently he had a girlfrind named Amber (no one was able to confirm this). He was deeply enthusiastic for code, and at the end of the season felt that transferring to FTC Team 15451 The Robotic Destriers of Livingston would be a better fit for him.

Heainz Manoj

Heainz Manoj
Anthony was a builder from 2017-2021, and team captain from 2020-2021. Taught by the legendary David and Preston, Anthony quickly learned the ways of the build. He was a pro-driver on the field and was quick with the improvisational game strategies. His deep knowledge of build with robotics allowed him to clutch fix our robot when it was falling apart at the seams, which is like all the time. Always energetic, his energy very easily passed on to all the other members, making robotics not a chore but a fun way for people to spend time. His unorthodox teaching made him perfect for leading an unorthodox team, always going "you monkey".

Anthony Chow

Anthony Chow
Thomas was a coder from 2017-2021 and team captain during the 2020-21 season. He tried to code the robot and make OpenCV pipelines and is famous for getting the entire team sick at worlds.

Thomas Lang

Thomas Lang
Ally was a builder for EK from 2017-2021. She helped build elements for the team with her trusty multi tool, and served as a role model for the incoming team of 2020. She more than regularly showed up to meetings, and even helped manage money for our trips to worlds. During the 2019 season, Ally also joined FTC 16593 Team FIRE, bringing her talents in build and coding to create an entire robot from scratch the day before States. During the 2020-2021 season, Ally also served as FIRE's captain.

Ally Mintz

Ally Mintz
Lucy participated in EK from 2017-2020 and was captain during the 2019-2020 season. Her involvement included documenting the team's journey through logbook as well as serving as head of CAD and team captain during the 2019-2020 season. Her favorite part of robotics was participating in community outreach and encouraging younger participants to develop an interest in STEM. In addition, it was under her and Gene's leadership that the EK group chat evolved from Whatsapp to Discord. Lucy also took the time to go to Riverdale and mentor the FTC team that Angelina was helping. In her free time she enjoys playing with her pet cat Tofu and finding cute Knick-knacks to add to her collection.

Lucy Xu

Lucy Xu
Divyank was a coder for EK from 2017-2021. He often helped test autonomous with the team. Besides just Java, he was proficient in a lot of technologies that other team members had no idea existed. It was Divy's idea to upload code to Github instead of maintaining our archaic way of emailing code to each other. The very website you are looking at right now was, in fact, made primarily due to Divy. He also served as a good teacher to the new members and came up clutch when he was needed.

Divyank Jain

Divyank Jain
Ethan was a coder and logbooker for EK from 2017-2021. He is a reliable member who always steps up to whatever task is assigned to him without question, whether it be coding or logbook. Ethan shows up when most other members will not. He also introduced the team how to wirelessly upload, making code a lot quicker to test. A lot of the grunt work of writing our logs and making finance plans was done by Ethan. He is also a professional rapper, able to rap all of outreach in about a minute during interviews, and he boosted our Discord server, making him the real MVP. Classic lines include saying "do you want my stick?" to male waiters.

Ethan Dcosta

Ethan Dcosta
Nicolo was a coder for EK from 2017-2020. He worked closesly with the code freshman year, and was instrumental in the development of early season robot code in subsequent years. Designs like his driver controls are still being used today. He was always a reliable person to get code help from, and had many smart ideas other team members could not even imagine. He also had a large hand in logbook, describing how our code worked with detailed annotations, helping judges to understand what was happening. In later years, he also played an important role in teaching future generations of EK how to code.

Nicolo Agbayani

Nicolo Agbayani
Angelina worked in outreach from 2017-2019. Her persuasive communication skills convinced many businesses to partner with EK. She also found many outreach opportunities, spending her time working with third graders to teach them about STEM. Ang was extremely well suited to work with children, being both fun when they were acting appropriately, and strict when they misbehaved. She spent the most time mentoring kids and teams, and was also able to get EK in touch with another FTC, 17009, The Steel Magnolias. This same socialness made her talented at talking with other teams while pit scouting.

Angelina Chu

Angelina Chu
Talia was a builder from 2017-2018. She helped create a number of designs and also worked in logbook.

Talia Rabban

Talia Rabban
Justin Kim was a coder from 2017-2018. He also helped do a variety of tasks, ranging from build to logbook.

Justin Kim

Justin Kim
Arib was a builder from 2017-2018. Much of his work was behind the scenes, but surely had a demonstrable impact on the team’s performance, especially later into the season.

Arib Mahmud

Arib Mahmud
Salem was a builder from 2017-2019. He worked hard assembling many of the channels together and biking to every meeting. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to continue doing robotics, but his presence is still felt.

Salem Crute

Salem Crute
Preston was THE builder for EK from 2016 to 2020. During the 2018-2019 season, Preston also served as captain. His ideas, along with David's, were fundamental to almost all of the build that happened on the team. He was never too serious, yet was still productive. He ensured the bot would be finished before a competition, and if it wasn't, he was willing to build the entire thing the night before. He also served as a valuable leader to the team, both when he was a captain and when he was not. He made sure everyone had something to do, and ensured that his knowledge was passed on. He also gifted all of us saftey glasses.

Preston Xu

Preston Xu
Gene was the code lead for EK from 2016-2020. He served as a both patient and skilled coder who often put code on his back and came up with much of the framework of the team's current code. He offered a wealth of creative ideas to those who worked with him about ways to make controls more intuitive and found different resources to help elevate the team's code. It was under his recommendation for the team to pursue looking into PID feedback loops and for the team to adopt a new path planning method. He also served as captain for the 2019-2020 season. His coaching on during competition was also legendary. "If the robot doesn't hang, then I'll hang" In his free time, Gene likes to main McCree in Overwatch or swim.

Gene Liu

Gene Liu
David was a builder and cadder for EK from 2016 to 2020. There was almost no one who cared as much about the team as he did, and as such he really wanted to see the team succeed. He often had a brutally honest, touch love way of teaching and giving feedback, which did not beat around the bush and made everyone try their best to work harder and fix any weaknesses David presented. He also made members try to figure out solutions on their own, instead of telling them explicitly what to do. In the end, everyone who has had the opportunity to work with him became smarter team members because of it. David also had a weird obsession with setting things on fire.

David Lev Samolkin

David Samolkin
Janice was the head of outreach, finance and logbook from 2017-2019. She has a background in fabrication and AutoCAD from BEST Robotics. Her creative thinking and adroit business-sense kept EK very organized and timely with deadlines and sponsorships. Her idea to digitize our logbook put us ahead of the curve before it became common to do so. She also spent time making our pit decorations. She was also a really easy person to get along with, and her energetic way of speaking helped her be a fun person to talk to. She also made sure everyone was in bed on time during worlds and could carry in Pokemon Go raids.

Janice Kim

Janice Kim
Anna was a builder and head of logbook from 2016-2019. Prior to doing FTC, she did VEX. She was team captain from 2018-19, and her expertise in both build and architectural design and planning even carried the team to Worlds’ when she was captain by getting us the Think Award. She managed logbook, setting up forms for attendance and creating lists of things that had to be done before worlds and who was doing it. Easily the most cracked member EK has ever had. She also spent time making pit decorations, was willing to dedicate time to teach and explain things to all the new members, and spent loads of time trying to get more girls into STEM at various outreaches. Truly a Renaissance woman.

Anna Xia

Anna Xia
Katrina served in outreach from 2017-18. She was always willing to volunteer to mentor many different FLL teams and go to different outreaches, like one in Warren NJ, where she had a personality perfect for working with children. Her optimism and presence made her a strong morale boost for the team, where she could easily bring up the mood of the team. Katrina also participated in Track, where she was a hurdler.

Katrina Pham

Katrina Pham
Ben was a coder for EK from 2016-2018. As head of code in ‘17-18, he taught most of the team the basics of coding in robotics using things like motors, sensors, and servos. His code served as the earliest template in many seasons, and is still used to teach freshman now. His dedication to the robot meant he would often stay up late in a hotel room at worlds, running the autonomous one more time to make sure it worked well.

Ben Li

Ben Li
Pierce was a programmer and builder on EK from 2016-2019. He has done robotics since 5th grade, doing 3 years of FLL and 1 year of VexIQ. He was on the team from 2016-2019, where he then went on to captain FTC 16593, Team FIRE.

Pierce Rubenstein

Pierce Rubenstein
Drew was a builder on EK from 2016-2017. He participated in FLL prior to FTC and likes to play piano and basketball.

Drew Fabian

Drew Fabian
Rachel was a builder on EK from 2016-2017. Having no prior experience in robotics, she joined to gain some building and programming knowledge. In her free time, she likes to dance, do martial arts, and play the piano and violin.

Rachel Su

Rachel Su
Max was a builder on EK from 2016-2017. He enjoyed tinkering with technology and computers, so robotics felt like a perfect for him. In his free time, he likes to play basketball, watch YouTube, and play video games.

Max Zhuang

Max Zhuang
Jacob was a builder on EK from 2016-2017. He had a bit of Lego Mindstorms experience before joining EK. He likes to play tennis, soccer, and ultimate frisbee in his free time.

Jacob Dennis

Jacob Dennis
Fillip was a builder on EK from 2016-2017 who took a robotics course at the Montclair GT Summer Program and became interested in the field. In his free time, he likes to fence, play soccer, and play video games.

Fillip Kizhner

Fillip Kizhner
Dmitry was a CADder for EK from 2015-2018, serving as co-captain from 2017-2018. His strong leadership skills helped to consolidate and solidify a team that was mostly freshman into one with a passion for robotics. He helped organize events like team dinners and made CAD animations for pit displays.

Dmitry Sambuk

Dmitry Sambuk
Andie WS was one of the cofounders of EK and was on the team from 2015-2018. She served as a team captain from 2017-18 and was responsible for managing the team’s business relationships and networking with other robotics teams. Her charismatic personality made her easy to talk to and get along with.

Andie Weiser-Schlesinger

Andie WS
Neha was one of the cofounders of EK and was on the team from 2015-2017. It was her idea for Livingston High School to have a second robotics team to match the increased interest in robotics at our school. Working with Mr. Novotny, EK was formed. Prior to EK, Neha was also a member of FTC Team 3415, the Lancers, and went to worlds in St. Louis.

Neha Parmar

Neha Parmar