On a robotics team, every person has a specific role. The designers and builders give a robot its body. A driver controls where the robot will go. And the programmer gives the robot its brain, allowing it to perform specific tasks.
Alex Beres is a programmer and, through code, ensures the team effort will perform tasks both autonomously and with the help of a driver. Alex developed his passion for technology at a young age and started channeling that drive to create.
“I’ve been programming since at least fifth grade,” Alex says. “I’ve been writing programs to do all sorts of things.”
When he saw robotics was offered in high school, Alex took his passion for coding even farther.
“[Robotics] was a way to really apply coding to a physical thing, to make something that actually does stuff in the real world with the code,” Alex says.
With his involvement in robotics and his passion for programming, Alex and his robotics team has dominated — qualifying for the VEX Worlds Championship and winning the Think Award at the Texas Regional Championship last season.
Embodying the elementary school teachers that fostered his love for coding, Alex also pays it forward, tutoring the students in the robotics club at Old Union.
Currently in his senior year, Alex shows no signs of slowing down. Alongside his involvement in SKIL, Southlake’s Sister Cities program, debate and the UIL Social Studies team, Alex plans to continue robotics this year and beyond.
“I intend to study computer science in college, preferably something along the lines of computer science and cognition, so artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Alex says. “I’m really interested in using computers to solve problems in innovative ways. I think that [artificial intelligence and machine learning] is going to be a revolutionary field.”