2026 TECHSTART TECHNOLOGY STUDENT OF THE YEAR

Nathaniel Flood named Technology Student of the Year for high school 

Nathaniel (Nathan) Flood is a senior at Hillsboro High School (HHS) with approximately 1,343 students located in Hillsboro, Oregon. Until joining a Computer Science (CS) class taught by Terry Alexander, Nathan had not considered computer science as a field of study. Since taking the CS class, Alexander reports that Nathan has excelled in the areas of programming, creating games and applications, as well as setting up Linux computer systems for the HHS Cybersecurity class. He mentors new programmers in Godot and is helping move Alexander’s CS program toward that development environment. Nathan maintains a 4.0 GPA in technology courses.


Nathan runs the HHS Game Development Club where multiple teams meet a few times a week to build games for the Oregon Game Project Challenge (OGPC). As the leader, he teaches students how to program for games and encourages them to participate in events like OGPC. He also led a OGPC project with a few other students to create a game together. Other programs he participates in include Cyber Skyline (CTF), the George Fox University High School Programming Competition, and game challenges via Itch.io. Nathan’s accomplishments and awards include:

  • Won third place in the George Fox programming competition

  • Achieved second place in the Cyber Skyline Capture the Flag Competition

  • Won second place with a game that uses AI character dialogue with a back-end server using an API run on a raspberry pi, to have more realistic characters.

  • Won third place in a game competition by writing a multiplayer framework using Firebase as a backend for a game.

  • Made a javascript timer for counting how long until then the end of the class period

Click on this link to see examples of his projects: https://luckythespacecat.github.io/home/

Nathan indicates that he plans to go to Portland Community College for two years and then transfer to either Portland State University or Oregon State University to complete his degree. 

Click here to see a complete list of the TechStart technology teachers and students who won TechStart 2026 awards.