Alexander Dean Hester is the founder of the CEESA FIRST Tech Challenge robotics championships and a math and design teacher with over 20 years of experience working in schools on 5 continents.

He is also an Industry Initiatives in Science and Mathematics Fellow who worked for Lockheed Aerospace on the space shuttle. Dean Hester programmed video games for the Atari 800 in 6502 assembly language and worked as a programmer on COBOL, Basic, C and Modula projects.

He has taught multiple teacher workshops at international conferences on the use of technology for teaching math and robotics to encourage student interest in STEM fields. He built his first robot as a senior in high school and has coached a FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team that has been to the FIRST World Championships twice in the last 5 years.