Mr. Cody King
Mr. King joined the Mitty faculty this year as a computer science teacher and is the lead mentor for the team. As the lead mentor, Mr. King will manage the team budget, plan for the competitions, and communicate with parents. He taught mathematics and computer science for the past six years and was a programming and electrical mentor for team 668, The Apes of Wrath, for the last five years. Mr. King graduated from Mitty in 2011 and earned a Bachelor’s in Mathematics and a Master’s in Teaching from Santa Clara University.
Dr. Diane Hart
Currently, Dr. Hart’s main role is to supervise the robotics team meetings. She has also taken over the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiative and is the point person for DEI training and any DEI-related concerns within the team. Dr. Hart reviews and approves communications with the parents of team members, and advises students on physics-related questions since physics is her area of expertise. Dr. Hart has been teaching at Mitty for two years, and she currently teaches AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C Mechanics at Mitty. She has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Environmental Engineering, and her Ph.D. research focused on numerical modeling of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills. When she finished her Ph.D., Dr. Hart taught in the math department at Santa Clara University for three years before coming to teach at Mitty.
Andrew Lawrence
Andrew has been with the team since the fall of 2021. As one of our mechanical mentors, Andrew leads students in the design and manufacturing of the robot. At competitions, Andrew works with the drive team to determine strategies for our matches and coaches our drivers during the match to execute said strategies. Andrew enjoys playing games, keeping aquariums, and spending time with his cats in his free time.
Stephanie Federwisch
Stephanie graduated from Mitty in 2007. Afterward, she graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction. During her undergrad, she worked on EteRNA an online game that crowdsources RNA research to help advance medical science. She now works at Google and attends all of TKO’s meetings and provides insight as a dedicated programming mentor.
Howard Coffin
Howard tries to make robotics an environment where students can express and build confidence in their skills, especially in math and science. He helps out students working on mechanical parts of the robot and teaches students how to safely and effectively use tools in the lab. Last year, he also spent some time teaching members of the JV team how to incorporate math and physics into their designs. Howard was on the Mitty robotics team from 2012 – 2016 and worked mostly in the mechanical department. Back then, Mr. Greene and Mr. Fairley were the two primary mentors for the team, and they served as huge inspirations to Howard and motivated him to continue with robotics after high school. He studied statistics and robotics in his undergraduate and robotics for his Masters at CMU, during which he researched autonomous mobile robots and statistical methods for robotics.