Three Arthrex Manufacturing Inc. East (AMIE) engineers are giving back to the community by sharing their passion – and Arthrex experience – with a group of Donahue Academy’s middle schoolers.
Advanced Manufacturing Mechanical Engineer Principal David Altomare lives in Ave Maria, Florida, where he attends Ave Maria Catholic Church. A few months into the 2025-26 school year, David was approached by the parish’s pastor, asking if he would consider leading the robotics program at the affiliated Donahue Academy.
“My second youngest daughter graduated from Donahue,” he said, “and, despite not having a robotics program when I was in school, I understand the role robotics programs play in fostering an interest in engineering in the next generation.”
David said that while the Donahue Academy’s robotics program existed before he became involved, the middle schoolers had never gone to a competition before. Because robotics teams are required to have two coaches in order to participate in competitions like the internationally coordinated FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge, David sought out his co-worker, Advanced Manufacturing Electrical Engineer II Chris Nataros, to bring more programming experience to the team.
“I participated in robotics programs all the way through school,” said Chris, “and I felt this was a good way to give back.”
David and Chris soon realized they could use more help, so they asked Advanced Manufacturing Mechanical Engineer II Massimo Camarda to join them in coaching the Donahue Robotics Raptors.
“We started out meeting with the kids once a week,” said Chris, “but leading up to the team’s first competition, we added an additional evening meeting – and then we added some Saturday sessions, too. It ended up being nice that between the three of us we could cover for each other if we had work or family obligations.”
The team’s efforts culminated in the FIRST LEGO League Challenge held on Saturday, April 18 in Port Charlotte, Florida. The theme of this year’s competition was “Unearthed” and included an array of archeological-related tasks the teams’ robots needed to be programed to perform: pick up, push, pull, lift, etc.
“We’d held a competition among the kids to come up with a base design, and then we used that design to adapt our robot for the different missions in the competition,” explained David.
In the end, the Raptors finished in fifth place out of 22 teams.
“It was fun to see the kids really get into the competition,” Massimo said. “I didn’t have the opportunity to participate in robotics programs in school, so I got to live vicariously through them.”
According to David, core values such as working well with others, being a good sport and innovation were easy to carry over from their everyday roles at Arthrex into their volunteer efforts. Bringing everything full circle, several of the Donahue Robotics Raptors have parents who work at Arthrex, and a handful of the kids have expressed interest in engineering careers.
“I’ve enjoyed helping our students understand the iterative process of design,” David said. “We’ve given the kids real-life applications for forming a hypothesis, testing ideas, brainstorming to make a better product and then creating new iterations – the exact process that fuels Arthrex innovation and our mission of Helping Surgeons Treat Their Patients Better®.”
