They call themselves Brainiacs. Five Cotter Junior High School students aspiring to engineering careers won first place in the annual tri-state Engineering Machine Design Challenge at Rochester Community and Technical College. There were 27 teams. The Brainiacs: Mateo Doerr, Clay Cagle, Gavin Slavey, Will Stier and Ifraz Mohmed. They met twice and week and weekends to brainstorm, build and fine tune a contraption they affectionately called “Rube,” short for Rube Goldberg. Their coach: Eric Paulsen.