Two Ph.D.s, two musicians, two leaders of the Robotics Club

The robotics team works on a robot for their annual competition in December.

Michael Koss, calculus teacher, and Timothy Naginey, physics teacher, are the two faculty advisors of the robotics club, but they also share many more interests. 

Robotics sparked both Koss and Naginey’s interest after they started teaching at North Cross. After Naginey heard about the robotics team, he wanted to get involved this year. Koss, on the other hand, got introduced to the team when he assumed the role of their bus driver a couple of years ago. 

Both Naginey and Koss also expressed that it was natural for them to take over the robotics team because of their background in STEM. Koss has his Ph.D in logic-based philosophy from Indiana University and Naginey earned his doctorate from Oxford University. 

“I always want to learn more about computer programming. I’ve done a little bit, but not very much, and that’s a big part of it, so I joined in as the assistant coach for the team,” Koss said.“It also fit because, as a math teacher, I'm sort of part of the STEM program as well, and that’s one of the main STEM extracurricular activities that we have. So it was a good fit and a good way for me to be involved and contribute.” 

Similarly, Naginey’s experience in physics contributed to his choice to take on this position. 

“I know a little bit about circuits and electronics from my physics degree,” Naginey said, “and there’s also a lot of other physics in robots, like just simple movement and acceleration of different parts.”  

This year, much of the team is brand new to robotics, so currently, they are figuring out some of the basics. 

“We just want to get a working robot first,” Naginey said. “We have like a base with wheels and we’re trying to get the code to work to power the thing, and so just the very basic stuff right now. All of us are just trying to figure out what we’re doing.” 

“Our goal right now is to build a robot that can move around on the wheels that we put on it,” Koss said, “and if we can accomplish that, that’s gonna be a really big successful accomplishment for a team that’s so new to all of this.” 

One of the students who stands out in the team, Umair Rasul ‘24, is often working on the robot after school, on his own time, and coming up with new ideas for it. 

“We finished building a prototype to figure out all the mechanics for it to move. We are currently working on coding the robot to move in different directions,” Rasul said. “My favorite part is seeing the parts that I built and coded working successfully when we got the robot to move.” 

The robotics team will be competing in the First Tech Challenge Frenzy Competition this year in December. Everyone on the team will be able to attend, but only one coach and two drivers will be involved in controlling the robot as the competition is going on. If something breaks or needs to be changed, the whole team will be there to work on that. 

The robotics team went to a kick-off meeting this year at the Roanoke County library, where they met some other teams from the region. 

“We all watched the video about this year’s challenge,” said Naginey, “and then we had pizza together and we discussed ideas about how we can get the robot to do what it has to do.” 

Before these coaches got involved in robotics, they were both intrigued by calculus. Naginey said that his interest in calculus began in college, when he took his first calculus class. 

“Calculus is the language of Physics,” Naginey said. “The first lecture of my first calculus class, he [the calculus professeur] talked about Zeno's paradox, which is a problem in philosophy, and the beginning of the math class was a philosophical paradox. From then on, I just loved that class.” 

Koss’ interest in calculus also began in a similar way. 

“It was really when I got to calculus that I thought ‘oh I really can see how fascinating this is and understand the ideas involved a lot more,’” Koss said, “So that really grabbed my attention, it made me go like ‘oh this is a really powerful, intellectual idea. I can see why this is a big deal historically’ and it was really interesting to see math in its full power, where you are not just learning some rules for manipulating symbols, but you’re seeing what those things mean, why they’re so useful.”

Both Naginey and Koss also share a fascination with music. Naginey plays guitar, while Koss plays the bass. They both played a little bit in a band together last year in the North Cross talent show, Muses at Bay, as well as the end-of-the-year faculty party. Koss expressed that he mostly plays the type of music that  is somewhat repetitive, like certain types of jazz, rock and funk music. 

“With the bass especially, a big part of it and a lot of genres of music, is you're playing something that all the other instruments in the band use as like a foundation for what they're doing,” Koss said. “The bass part then can often be a little repetitive, but if it works out well, it’s the part that gets you stamping your feet and grooving along to the music, and that’s what I want when I’m playing bass.”