Alex Battikha
I build things. I run strvX, an AI automation company for businesses and government. We sell it two ways: custom builds through the services arm, and packaged products on the product side.
After 10+ years in robotics, what I want most is to use it to change lives. That's why I research surgical robotics at UCSD.
What I'm working on this week
Working with strvX partners and active clients to expand the network.
Building a tool to surface fixer-upper properties in target markets, with my dad on the deal side.
Tuning quant strategies for live deployment.
Bioengineering coursework at UCSD, year one of four.
Where I've worked
- Summer 2026
Katomed
Software Engineering Intern- Incoming. Joining the team to work on medical-device software.
- 2026 → Present
strvX
Founder- AI automation for businesses and government.
- Services arm for custom builds, product arm for off-the-shelf systems.
- 2025 → Present
ARCLab · UC San Diego
Undergraduate Researcher · LapSurge- Teleoperated laparoscopic surgery on a humanoid robot.
- Working on tool-tip precision with ToF sensors and visual lasers.
- Jun 2024 → Sep 2025
Sanford Burnham Prebys
Co-lead Developer · ecPATH- ML pipeline that spots extrachromosomal DNA from histopathology images.
- Currently pending Nature submission; shipping into hospitals next.
- Summer 2025
Johns Hopkins · Information Security Institute
Research Intern · Dr. Anton Dahbura- Built a 5-robot testbed proving a new fail-over protocol for wireless distributed systems.
- Patent pending. Presented at JHU Design Day.
- Summer 2024
UCLA
Cryptographic Researcher · Prof. Miodrag Potkonjak- Designed a novel PUF for hardware-fingerprint cryptography.
- Stress-tested it with NIST statistical suites and adversarial AI attacks.
- 2018 → 2024
FTC Team 11212 · The Clueless
Captain · Mechanical Lead · Driver- World Champions in Houston, 1st of 7,100+ teams.
- Six seasons on the team, captain through the winning years. Featured in FIRST's Behind the Bot.
Ventures & research
strvX
AI automation for businesses and government. Custom builds on the services side, packaged products on the product side. Customers see lower costs and more revenue.
ecPATH
ML pipeline that spots extrachromosomal DNA straight from histopathology images. Shipping it into hospitals next.
LapSurge
Teleoperated laparoscopic surgery on a humanoid robot. I work on tool-tip precision with ToF sensors and visual lasers.
Quant Research
Building algos for equities and options. Signal research, backtesting, and execution, end to end.
FTC 11212 · The Clueless
Six seasons on the team, captain through the winning years. World Championship in Houston. Robot reliability above 99%. Watch us in Behind the Bot.
Swarm Robotics @ Johns Hopkins
Built a 5-robot testbed that proves a new fail-over protocol for wireless distributed systems. Presented at JHU Design Day.
Neuron
An AI co-pilot for tutors. Built because 1:1 learning shouldn't only be for families that can spend $100 an hour on it.
Alex Tutoring
Math, science, CS. I teach the way I wish I had been taught: by building things that work.
Wins & recognition
Jacobs Scholar
2025Full-ride at UCSD. Sub-1% acceptance rate, named for Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs. 9 of us in the country every year.
FTC World Champion, 1st of 7,100+
2024Captained The Clueless (FTC 11212) to first place at Worlds in Houston. Mechanical lead, driving coach, six years on the team.
U.S. Youth Delegate
20241 of 9 U.S. youth delegates picked for a UN-affiliated environmental conference.
San Diego's 25 Most Remarkable Teens
2024Named in the Robotics category by San Diego County as a Westview High senior.
Patent Pending at Johns Hopkins
2025Co-inventor on a new robotics communication protocol with the JHU Information Security Institute.
UCLA Cryptographic Research
2024Designed a novel PUF with Prof. Potkonjak. Broke and stress-tested it with NIST stats and adversarial AI.
Selected projects
Autonomous Pollution Drone
Full-scale UAV that spots ocean trash on its own. YOLOv8 tuned to 96% precision on a 6,000+ image dataset.
Cryptographic PUF
Hardware fingerprint that resists cloning. Validated with NIST stats and AI-driven attacks at UCLA.
Swarm Testbed @ JHU
5 robots, TCP/IP, fail-over protocol. A patent rode on whether they could coordinate without a leader.
FlipFinder-SD
Automates fixer-upper hunting for realtors. Pulls MLS and county data so my dad's agency can spot deals without combing listings by hand.
Cipher
Real-time forex dashboard. Streams live prices, runs momentum and trend indicators, and flags buy/sell signals as they fire. Built for my uncle's trading desk.
Handle
↗AI-native property maintenance. A tenant calls a number, a voice agent triages the issue, then the system autonomously finds, calls, and negotiates with contractors. No human dispatcher needed.
Watchdog
↗Real-time crime intelligence for SF dispatchers. Fuses live SFPD, Fire/EMS, 311, 511, and CalTrans CCTV feeds into one ranked queue with spatial-temporal correlation and incident clipping.
Robotics & drones
Field footage from the things I've built. FTC matches, swarm experiments, autonomous drone runs. Click a tile to play.
FTC Worlds · Finals Match 3
Houston, 2024. The winning match. Captain and driver for The Clueless. 1st of 7,100+ teams.
Behind the Bot · The Clueless
FIRST's documentary on our championship run. Covers all six seasons, including the ones we got knocked out of early.
Robot Reveal · Freight Frenzy
Season-opening reveal of the robot I helped design and drive. Mechanical lead, season 4.
Environmental Remediation UAV
Autonomous pollution drone. YOLOv8 tuned to 96% precision on 6k+ images for ocean-trash detection.
Tech I reach for
How I work
Six seasons with FTC 11212, rookie year to World Champions (1st of 7,100+). Captain through the winning years. Four lessons that stuck.
Boring beats clever
Early FTC seasons I kept building clever mechanisms that broke when it mattered. Championship season we ran 99.1% uptime, mostly off boring parts we'd tested to death. Now I'd rather ship the version I know will hold up than the one that looks impressive.
Own every layer
At FTC 11212 I was mechanical lead, driver, and captain through the winning seasons. At strvX I'm the engineer, designer, and the one selling it. If I'm accountable for the outcome, I don't get to hide behind someone else's part of the stack.
Queue is louder than the match
Two minutes between matches and four people are yelling fixes at me at once. Staying calm was the easy part. The harder one was figuring out, in real time, whose feedback to actually act on. I lean on that filter every time the room gets loud now.
Worlds wasn't year one
Six seasons with FTC 11212 before we won in Houston. strvX, ecPATH, research at UCSD: I'm still in the messy middle of all three. The best stuff I've done has come out of stretches that felt like this.
Have an idea, a deal, or want to talk about AI and robotics?
Founder intros, research collabs, wild ideas. I reply to all of them.