Three New Jersey teens brought home two international awards for their artificial intelligence robot, who competed at the International Robocup Junior Championship in Sydney, Australia earlier this month. The team -- made up of high school juniors Julian Lee of Livingston and Jeffrey Cheng from Bridgewater, and senior Alexander Lisenko, also of Bridgewater -- won the third place World Title for Individual Team Tournament, and the Judge's Award for Best Rescue Engineering Strategy in the Rescue Maze League. The trio belongs to Storming Robots, a New Jersey-based Robotics Learning Lab, and competed against teams of 14- to 19-year-olds from around the world in the July 4-9 contest. "The competition went by quick despite the many hours of work. It was an exciting but stressful experience, which was especially fun due to our great team dynamic," Lee said.

The first international robotics competition for high schoolers made headlines before it even started -- and after the event was over as well. First there was the story of the all-girl Afghanistan team, which was denied visas to attend for unknown reasons. Then there was the post-competition story: All six teens on the Burundi team were reported missing on Wednesday, the day after the competition ended, with reports that two of them were headed to Canada. At the last minute, the Afghan team did get visas. They waved their country's flag during the parade of nations at the event's opening ceremonies.