"You should have seen this place when we first got here - there was nothing," said Emmett Neyman, 15, a Masterman High School freshman and one of 37 students who proudly showed off the eclectic warehouse.
Founded over the summer, Atomic Robotics meets four times a week, aided by 17 adult mentors, to work on building a robot that can shoot as many basketballs and score as many points as possible in two minutes and 15 seconds.
The group is part of a nationwide competition organized by FIRST, a nonprofit that sets the rules and guidelines for the contest each year, backed by corporate sponsors and notable celebrities, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, and crowd favorite Stephen Colbert.
On Wednesday night, though most of the other juniors in the group had chosen to attend a college fair, Taylor Washington's priorities took her first to Warren Street.
"I was kind of conflicted," Washington, 16, said as she asked one of the adult mentors whether she should stay or go. She eventually left for the fair, but not before explaining why this student club was more than just an after-school activity.
"We hear on the radio that there is a lack of engineers in the world, so we're prepared for that," she said, adding that her job as a computer programmer on the team was like "what I'm doing in class in real life."
Washington echoed the concerns of companies around the country that have observed a drop-off in the number of U.S. students graduating with engineering degrees.
Apple executives recently estimated in the New York Times that it would take the company nine months to find enough qualified engineers to staff a plant built in America. In China, the company found more than enough engineers in 15 days.
