Robotics Course | 3 Young Syrian Engineering Brothers | UWaterloo Trained

What: Intensive Robotics course covering software, hardware and automation

Who: For youth aged 7 to 17 | Course to be taught by 3 brothers who graduated from University of Waterloo Engineering and have experience in start-ups and Silicon Valley

When: 2 Choices:

(1) Every Saturday in July: 11 am - 2:00 pm, or

(2) Every Sunday in July: 11 am - 2:00 pm

Where: Al-Risala Academy, 1224 Dundas St E #15, Mississauga, ON

Cost: $150

Our Story

Hamza, Anas and Hassan are roboticist siblings who came to Canada as refugees after the war in Syria. They started their journey towards being experts in robotics back in Syria when an engineering student decided to teach robotics at the local mosque. Additionally, they got exposure to education as their mother used to teach electronics engineering at the University of Damascus.

Since then, they’ve discovered and followed their passion for robotics. In Canada, Hamza and Anas established a robotics team in their high school within months of arriving in Canada. At the university level, Hamza and Anas led their university’s Mars rover team to achieve 2nd place internationally (1st in North America).

Meanwhile, the 3 siblings taught robotics to elementary, middle and high school students as a part-time job. Their students achieved various international podium positions for the past 4 years even during COVID.

Currently, Anas is starting his PhD in robotics, Hassan is finishing his degree in computer engineering and Hamza is working in a robotics startup after finishing his masters in robotics with a focus on artificial intelligence and will start attending medical school in September.

Most importantly, they decided to open the Intellibots Academy for Robotics and Coding. This summer, they’re running courses on the weekend for different age levels in collaboration with Al-Risala Islamic school, which is providing their venue.

Our Motivation

There is a dire need for high quality robotics education taught by qualified experts especially in our community. The Canadian education system realized the importance of technology education and started offering basic coding classes at an earlier age. However, these classes have little practical link to the real world, and often do not motivate children to discover their true potential.

The siblings noticed this need and decided to start teaching this summer, bringing their expertise from industry and research into their curriculum, whilst keeping classes fun for children.

Their goal is to provide strong education in robotics, way beyond what the Canadian education system can currently offer, in order to prepare the next generation of leaders in technology!

What we’re offering

The Intellibots Academy is offering classes in robotics that focus on “mechatronics” as a whole. Classes are designed to have contained modules that can be finished in a single session. Each session will include a discussion of a general concept, followed by instruction-based mechanical building sessions, and finally, students use code to bring their creations into motion!

The unified curriculum aims to provide problem solving skills to students at different levels of knowledge. For example, some more advanced classes will include building instructions that are faulty or incomplete at key points to allow students to debug and problem solve. Another example of level-appropriate teaching is using block coding for younger students, and python coding for older students.

The academy designed their curriculums to allow children to explore as much as possible. Ideally, most students will push the boundaries of their problem solving skills because instructors (the siblings) will make sure each student is operating in their “zone of proximal development”, a concept that refers to what learners can do with appropriate guidance (more about this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development)

Classes will take place on the weekend once a week for 3 hours. The academy will try to accommodate different times for Saturday and Sunday.

Host or Publisher The MAX Executive Team