Yaya has been playing with LEGO robots since 2006. While in High School, she tutored on a voluntary basis in Primary School and Parent/Child Adult Education weekend robotics courses. During her school years Yaya achieved robotics success in State, National and World Robotics events and other awards, including:
- Two World RoboCup Junior Firsts (the Rescue category in Austria and the Dance category in Singapore);
- First place in the senior category of the Australian RoboGals competition;
- The highest Australian School CSIRO award – the Gold CREST;
- The highest Australian School Science Award – first place in the BHP-Billiton Engineering Award;
- Gained a first Citation Award (among 1600 of the brightest students from 72 countries) when taken to the ISEF event in Arizona USA by the CSIRO
- Invited to Google’s Australia-New Zealand Anita Borg Scholarship retreat
- Gave an invited oral presentation of her paper at the IEEE Fifth Biomedical International Conference in Thailand, written while she was in Grade 10
- Represented Tasmania in the Pride of Australia Medal
- Finalist in the Tasmanian Division of the Young Australian of the Year
- Was the first School student to be invited to address the Tasmanian Parliament at their Annual Science Forum,
- Was the only school child included as one of Cosmopolitan’s top 80 women in Australia in 2014
- Achieved the top ATAR equivalent of 99.95 in her International Baccalaureate
- Was offered and accepted the Australian National University’s Tuckwell Scholarship
- Was offered and accepted an internship at Google, Sydney, over her Christmas break
- Won prizes and medals in Piano and Judo when younger.
Yaya was awarded a first class honours degree in software engineering at the Australian National University, Canberra. You will be able to see more details of her background when http://www.YayaLu.net has been revised.