Report on the US Patent and Trade Office Volunteer peter Mehrevari:
It is most insightful to see how children at that age think and process out solutions to a problem. Sometimes they come at a problem from a completely different angle than a person with a more learned mindset.
Pete Mehravari, who serves as a coordinator for teams of ReSET volunteers through the US Patent and Trade Office, is excited about his work at Whittier Educational Campus, where he teaches 3rd– and 4th-grade students engineering, physics, and material science. Mehravari, now in his second year with ReSET, has been using programmable robots to teach basic computer programming and problem solving skills.
Last year, Mehravari’s students were tasked with programming their robot to autonomously traverse a course by figuring out distances and angles between checkpoints and adapting those measurements into basic programming code. After completing the basic course, students made up their own advanced course and were successful in making their robot traverse the course on their first try.
Mehravari, who has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a JD from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, feels that his early experiences with science as a child helped lay the foundation for future success: “My father was an electrical engineer who brought science and engineering into the household at a very early age. This helped me gain confidence and excitement in these fields, which in turn opened up many opportunities, not only in higher education, but also in my employment goals.”