Clay Nicholson is a software engineer and youth robotics leader building educational tools and experiences that scale—currently shipping features at Hack Club that reach thousands of high schoolers worldwide. With five years of hands-on experience, he blends front-end UX work (notably contributions to the popular Sprig game editor) with systems thinking from leading programming, mechanical, and electrical efforts for award-winning robotics teams. A founder-level contributor to Green Mountain Robotics and co-founder of Hack Club Blueprint, he also mentors younger students as an FLL coach and camp counselor. Clay pairs research rigor—earning a top ISEF award for a U-Net pancreatic tumor segmentation project—with practical industry exposure from internships and job shadows at places like GlobalFoundries and MIT LLRISE. Based in Williston, VT and enrolled in college courses, he brings rare depth for his age: shipping production tools while directing competitive robotics programs.
5 years of coding experience
Grade 12, Grade 12 at Champlain Valley Union High School
Part Time Classes, Mathematics and Computer Science, Part Time Classes, Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Vermont
Part Time Classes, Economics, Part Time Classes, Economics at Community College of Vermont
🍃 Learn to code by making games in a JavaScript web-based game editor.
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Contributions:5 reviews, 7 PRs, 1 push in 10 months
Contributions summary:Clay primarily contributed to the user interface of the Sprig game editor. Their work included implementing a share room popup with functionalities to copy room links, create, and manage room passwords. They integrated a close button and a placeholder image within the popup and added a specific list of tags for games, suggesting a focus on user experience and collaborative features within the game development environment. Additionally, they modified the navbar to include the share room feature and made it conditional based on the save strategy.
🌈 The new, new Hack Club website (uses Next.js & Theme UI).
Contributions:2 PRs, 63 pushes, 3 branches in 1 month
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