About me

Hi,

My name is Gavin Taan, and I'm an aerospace engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a hands-on approach to building things — whether that's a piece of hardware, a competition robot, or an aircraft I'm flying myself. I hold a Private Pilot Certificate and have a patent pending on an original design, and I spend most of my free time turning technical ideas into working projects rather than leaving them on paper.

For four seasons, I've competed with VEX Robotics Team 95111V as Lead Builder, Competition Strategist, and Drive Team Commander — designing, 3D-modeling, and building competition robots that won a California State Championship and placed 3rd in Robot Skills at the VEX World Championship out of over 12,000 teams. Some of that work has come down to genuinely obsessive tuning — I once spent over 400 hours dialing in a single mechanism's rubber-band tension, launch angle, and RPM to get it competition-ready.

Outside of robotics and coursework, I'm drawn to flight and anything that involves designing and building something end to end — from CAD to fabrication to testing. When I'm not working on a technical project, you'll usually find me playing basketball or bodyboarding.

I also have a background in technical theater, where I spent years doing set construction, lighting design, and stage management — work that taught me a lot of the same problem-solving and hands-on fabrication instincts I now apply to engineering.

Technical Interests:

  • VEX Robotics Team 95111V — Lead Builder, Competition Strategist & Drive Team Commander, CA State Champion, 3rd place Robot Skills at Worlds

  • Patent Pending

  • Private Pilot

  • Cross Country/ Track & Field Distance

  • Basketball

  • Bodyboarding

Theater Background:

  • Lighting Designer for Finding Nemo Kids, A Charlie Brown Christmas, & Dare to Dream Jr

  • Assistant Backstage Manager for Newsies Jr