Alyson Coates noticed a need for more STEM programs for young girls in her rural community of Blount County. So, she decided to fill the gap herself.
In 2022, Coates and her family started a local robotics team to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge, a national robotics competition for middle school and high school students. Now in its second year, the team, dubbed the “Tennessine Titans,” in honor of Tennessee’s contribution to the production of the new element Tennessine, is headed to FIRST’s global robotics championship in Houston, Texas, this April.
“I wanted to build a team to participate in this specific program because I resonated with FIRST’s mission to provide life-changing robotics programs that give young people the skills, confidence and resilience to build a better world,” Coates, a senior technical staff member in the Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said.
From the start, Coates was motivated by her personal motto, “Empowered Women, Empower Women,” and her own experience breaking barriers in STEM to provide opportunities for girls. As a college student in the early 1990s, a professor told her women didn’t need to be working at nuclear power plants. In turn, she graduated and went on to earn a Master of Engineering in Nuclear Engineering and spent 23 years at various nuclear power plants. She came to ORNL in 2020 as an international nuclear security subject matter expert. She is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Tennessee in nuclear engineering with a certificate in nuclear security science and analysis.
This wealth of experience informed her perspective as she organized a team and recruited members, the majority of whom are girls. During their first year, Coates noted the importance of not just providing support in learning how to build and code robots but also mentoring the girls to speak up and be loud and proud about their accomplishments.
“It has been amazing to see the girls step out of their comfort zones,” Coates said. “Last year, some were afraid to speak during the interview or to other teams, but this year, they are more confident and eager to speak.”
Coates has also leveraged her role at ORNL to share unique educational experiences for the team. Last fall, the Titans visited ORNL’s campus to demonstrate their robot from last season. While onsite, they toured the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s supercomputers and met several FIRST alumni.
“The team was so impressed at how large ORNL is — not just in terms of size but how many paths in STEM we represent,” Coates said. “The day we spent on site showed the team the real-world applications of science and how their hobbies and interests right now can become careers later on.”
The Tennessine Titans earned their trip to the FIRST World Championship in Houston after winning the FIRST Tech Challenge Tennessee State Championship’s INSPIRE Award in early March. The INSPIRE award is a prestigious honor given to the team that best embodies the challenge of the program. You can donate to the team’s trip via Venmo @Blountindependent-Robotics and track the team’s preparation on Facebook (Tennessine Titans FTC 21457) and Instagram (@Tennessine_Titans).
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
