A team of 46 high school students from Colonie, NY has advanced to the finals of a national robotics challenge competition. Known as "Team 250" and sponsored by Troy, NY-based GlobalSpec, the Colonie High School Robotics team will now compete in the FIRST National Championships, April 12-14 in Atlanta, GA.

In winning the Finger Lakes Regional, March 8 – 10, 2007, Colonie High's robotics team successfully competed against 35 other teams from Upstate New York, Long Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Canada. Team 250 is now preparing for the national championship competition where it will be challenged by nearly 400 other teams from across the country and around the world.

Dr. Stephen MacMinn, chief technology officer at GlobalSpec, says the national tournament bound Colonie High School Robotics team "serves as an example to students everywhere that research, discipline, the application of science and sheer teamwork pay big rewards today and down the road when they will be pursuing professional careers. We are proud to sponsor these achievers and wish them every success this month in Atlanta."

GlobalSpec is the leading specialized search engine, information resource and e-publishing company for the engineering, industrial and technical communities and this is the first year they have sponsored Team 250.

FIRST, based in Manchester, NH, is a not-for-profit public charity that designs programs to motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math. The organization's robotics competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules.

Robots Tasked to Hang Pool Rings
This year's Finger Lakes competition included having robots hang inflatable pool rings on 24 pegs located at three different levels on a 10-foot-high rack. The challenge included a 15-second autonomous period when robots performed actions based on a team's programming and a two-minute tele-operated period where drivers remotely controlled their robots.

Team 250 Also Wins Safety and Animation Awards
For the second year in a row, Team 250 won the Finger Lakes Regional Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award for their comprehensive safety program and use of safe practices on the field and when working on the robot. The team also won the Autodesk Animation Award for the 30-second computer animation they created.

Team organizer, Deborah Saulsbery, said the animation award was particularly thrilling because the students had made many advances in their animation skills over the past year. She also praised the entire FIRST organization and GlobalSpec's participation.

"We are so excited about the national competition and the opportunities that FIRST brings to our team members — opportunities they don't have otherwise. And we're very excited and thankful for GlobalSpec’s participation," said Saulsbery.

For additional information on Team 250, please contact Deborah Saulsbery at 441-8112 (d.saulsbery@team250.org) or Tom Casey at 518-459-1220 (Casey.Tom@gmail.com)

About GlobalSpec, Inc.
GlobalSpec, Inc. is the leading specialized vertical search, information services and e-publishing company serving the engineering, technical and industrial communities. GlobalSpec users benefit from domain-expert search engines, a broad range of proprietary and aggregated Web-based content and 55 product-centric e-newsletters – helping them search for and locate products and services, learn about suppliers and access comprehensive technical content. SpecSearch®, GlobalSpec's trademarked search technology, allows users to search by specification more than 153 million parts in 2,000,000 product families from more than 21,000 supplier catalogs. For suppliers, GlobalSpec offers highly filtered sales and marketing opportunities, product promotion and brand advertising platforms, and a wide range of e-media advertising and marketing solutions. For more information, visit www.globalspec.com.

GlobalSpec, SpecSearch, The Engineering Search Engine and The Engineering Web are registered trademarks of GlobalSpec, Inc.

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E-mail: marketing@globalspec.com

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