Get to Know Me! by Kevin Lobo

Hi! I am Kevin Lobo and I am a sophomore at Wissahickon High School. I was born in India and have had to move a bunch throughout my life. I have settled in this area for a few years now, which has helped me be more involved in my community than before. I am a proud member of Miss Daisy, team 341, our high school’s robotics team. I am super excited to be going to my first world championship in April this year! I help to program our robot, and we have the majority of the code for this season already written. (We just have to wait for the mechanical subteam to give us the actual subsystems to test.) I also take part in competitive programming competitions and hackathons. My friend and I placed seventh internationally at UPenn’s PClassic, and we have been training to do even better next time. With MLH hackathons, I have been able to put ideas to life with people all over the world, from Egypt to India, and it has been really fun!

​I am also an active member of our school’s debate team. I compete in Lincoln Douglas, which is a one-on-one form of debate. This year’s topic dealt with the appropriation of outer space by private entities, which was really unique and interesting. I made it to the regional semifinals this year, which is a good bar to set for myself. I play soccer and tennis, so I naturally love sports and the outdoors. This summer, I helped train a group of younger kids in my neighborhood, as well as volunteered for the Elmwood Zoo. Spending that much time with kids really taught me how to talk to an entirely different audience.

I have interests that clearly fall all over the place, so it is difficult to decide what I want to do in the future. Through TRIP, I hope to foster the core skills required for each of these activities and apply them to create a really interesting experiment with flies! This experience will be essential to whatever field I go into, whether it be computer science or biochemistry. That said, our first day went really well and I know the TRIP will continue to be great!