Homer Floyd Willis IV “Scooter”
has been active with FIRST robotics for 15+ years and has helped start three different high school robotics teams competing in FIRST. He understands the importance of mentoring and what exposing students to the field of engineering can do to inspire a young mind. When he was in high school he participated in a mentoring program that found an engineer from the community to help answer questions about using a computer to turn on and off motors to build a robot. The mentor gave an unbelievable amount of time to answer many silly questions that soon became more complex. The robotic control system that was developed was entered into the High School Science Fair and placed 3rd in Engineering at the International Science and Engineering Fair. Scooter attended the University of Florida to major in Electrical Engineering, was elected Student Body President in 1989 and went on to earn a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering, an MBA, Masters in Computer Science and a PhD in Computer Engineering. Scooter is the Director of Computational Biology for Avera Cancer Institute working with large clinical trial data sets to identify genomic markers that are predictive of treatment benefit and prognostic of outcome in Cancer. Scooter is married to Karen Krumholtz the Executive Director of the Schmidt Family Foundation. Their son Devin attends FAU high school and has competed in First Lego League, FTC, and FRC. Scooter is fully committed to establishing programs that get elementary and middle school students excited about learning through competitive robotics.