Mentors and Supervisors
Mentors and Supervisors
As a team, we're deeply grateful for the people who teach us. Eastbots wouldn't succeed as much as we have without those who devote their time to help our students learn and develop, both as engineers and as people.
Steve Tell
Steve is a founding mentor of the Eastbots, having been recruited by our original self-motivated students in the fall of 2012 before our rookie season. He has coached robot design, garage machining, power wiring, but especially enjoys teaching about sensors to help students make robots that respond to their environment. For the last several years he has also volunteered as a FIRST robot inspector at local competitions. When not doing FIRST, Steve is a Senior Research Scientist in the Circuits Resarch Group at NVIDIA corporation. He lives in the ECHHS district in Chapel Hill with his wife Rose and dog Marconi.
Bradley Nemitz
I am a math teacher and mentor to the Eastbots at East Chapel Hill High School. I student-taught at ECHHS while studying math and education at UNC Chapel Hill. After graduating, I moved to Richmond, Virginia where I taught for 5 years and met my wife. We moved back to Chapel Hill for her study Public Heath at UNC and I returned to East. We have two dogs, Ash and Maple, who love to sniff and run around our backyard. I am very into board games like Agricola and Power Grid and I try to be out on my mountain bike (and sometimes road bike) as much as possible. I enjoy playing music and play guitar for the East faculty band. I do photography and often take photos for the Eastbots. Though I've done some programming some and can understand what's going on with our programming team, I feel most at home with the mechanical team, as I'm used to working on cars, bikes, and house projects.
Jeff Alguire
Jack of all Trades, Master of Some. I grew up in a small island town in Southeast Alaska. I have been a stage set designer and set builder for many many years, as well as a residential carpenter. I have always been curious about how things work. That includes a desire to tinker and deconstruct things and rebuild them for my own purposes. I will be the first to admit that I am not good at it and still have a lot to learn.
Amalan Iyengar
Hi! I'm an Eastbots class of 2016 Alum and have been mentoring since the 2018-2019 season. I finished my Bachelor's in Computer Science and Master's in Electrical Engineering from NC State and currently work at Rampart Communications.
Jessica Buday
Jessica is a native of Chapel Hill and was a student at Orange High School, Class of 2003. She has a BS in Biochemical Engineering from the University of Georgia, and has spent her career working in various roles in pharmaceutical manufacturing - technical engineering support, project management, automation and operations leadership. She is currently the Strategic Accounts Director for Corning Pharmaceutical Technologies. In her free time, she enjoys reading, live music, traveling, and hiking with her husband Shawn and dog Ziggy. She advocates for gender parity and inspiring women to enter STEM fields, and serves on the Southeast US regional board of the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association.
David Brooks
David (DJ) works at Duke Eye Center specializing in pediatrics and specialty contact services. DJ began working with Eastbots and Beastbots part time in the 2025 season and was fully onboarded afterwards. he is an FRC alum and also volunteers at FLL, FTC and FRC events.
Allison Bluj
My name is Allison Bluj and I started working with Teams 4795 and 4861 during the 23-24 season. I teach in the engineering department at East Chapel Hill HS. I enjoy mentoring FRC Robotics because students have the opportunity to develop and master a range of technical and non-technical skills that are important for success later in life. I also enjoy seeing students apply some of the things we have learned in the engineering course to a real-life problem. FRC games are exciting and challenging. With the FRC teams here at ECHHS I like working with the new members on Beastbots. There's so much to learn and Beastbots is a great place to get started.
Lucien Genova
Lucien is an Eastbots alum and current mechanical engineering student at NC State. He loves working on cars and robots in his spare time, as well as shredding at his local mountain bike trails.
Srinivas Iyengar
Hi! I'm an Eastbots class of 2023 alum and have been mentoring since the 2025-2026 season. I'm a senior studying Mechanical Engineering at NC State
Madhav Patel
Madhav has been a mentor for Eastbots and Beastbots since 2023. He works as a Systems Engineer and has a background in Aerospace Engineering.