The BEST History

BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization whose mission is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science, and technology through participation in a sports-like, science and engineering-based robotics competition. The idea for a BEST competition originated in 1993 when two Texas Instruments (TI) engineers, Ted Mahler and Steve Marum, were serving as guides for Engineering Day at their company site in Sherman. Together with a group of high school students, they watched a video of freshmen building a robot in Woody Flowers’ class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The high school students were so interested that Ted and Steve said, “Why don’t we do this?” With enthusiastic approval from TI management, North Texas BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) was born. The first competition was held in 1993 with 14 schools and 221 students. Now, BEST consists of over thirty hubs across the United States and three regional championships, with more than ten thousand students participating.