32 teams will vie for nine spots to advance to the Indiana Championship Tournament 
Indiana University Northwest will host the 4th annual FIRST® Lego® League Indiana Qualifying Tournament in Savannah Gym on Sunday, Nov. 21. The annual event, which encourages young students to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math, will take place on campus between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m.
More than 30 teams, comprised of students from schools around the area, will compete at IU Northwest. Each team will compete for one of nine spots to advance their team to the Indiana Championship Tournament taking place in December.
Team members have been busy working, designing and programming their robot designs over the past few weeks to prepare for the upcoming tournament. Teams used robotic kits to create and program their robots.
The theme for this year’s tournament is entitled, The Body ForwardTM. Students will have the opportunity to explore the innovative world of biomedical engineering to discover ways to repair injuries, overcome genetic predispositions, and maximize the body’s potential to help patients lead happier and healthier lives.
Students will compete in four areas: Teamwork; Project; Technology; and Performance.
For Teamwork, teams will demonstrate their ability to work collectively as a group to reach their goal, and in Project, teams will reveal their robot design.
Competing in Technology, teams will show judges how they have learned to program the robot they have built out of Legos®, and in Performance, the students compete for points on a competition table using their programmed robot.
The public is invited and encouraged to attend the free tournament.
To learn more about the FIRST® Lego® League Indiana Qualifying Tournament, go to http://www.iun.edu/~fll/. For additional information on FIRST®, please visit http://www.usfirst.org/.
The Savannah Gym is located at the southeast corner of the main campus parking lot at 33rd Avenue and Broadway in Gary. Free parking is available in the main campus lot.