24 Hours of STEM

Karthik Kangasabapathy has always had a passion for education. While mentoring students in robotics, he began to realize that many of the education and career decisions being made by young people were often shaped by external factors as opposed to their own passions, causing them to take paths that led them to unintended destinations. Throughout his career, he has worked to help students discover what they are truly passionate about. Karthik spent 9 years at Innovation First International, where he was responsible for exciting young people about STEAM (Science, Technology, Education, Arts & Mathematics) education, via participation in the VEX Robotics Competition. A mathematician by trade, he has designed competition robotics games that have been played by over 75,000 teams of students across the globe. He has won numerous awards for his dedication to furthering robotics education, including the prestigious Woodie Flowers Finalist Award for exemplary mentoring and being a positive role model for high school students through the FIRST Robotics Competition. He served as the lead mentor for FRC Team 1114 from 2004-2016 and now acts as a team advisor. During his tenure with the team they won the FIRST World Championship and were inducted into the FIRST Hall of Fame for winning the Championship Chairman's Award. Karthik now works for FIRST Canada as the Manager of Operations, Digital Strategy & Analytics. He also hosts various global robotics events, having worked with media personalities such Mythbusters' Grant Imahara and Kari Byron, gave an international recognized TEDx talk, and has hosted televised robotics specials on ESPN and CBS