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Gifted Kids' Success Storys!

"Javier is a bold lecturer who has spoken to audiences around the world and has won numerous competitions for his enterprising inventions. He was just 8-years-old when he won his first award for enterprising robot design using Legos and a computer chip.

“Once I realized I enjoyed inventing, I began to see how I could provide solutions to common problems,” said the Woodlands, Texas teen. “Inventing things became a way to help people.”

It’s clear that although Javier is a normal high school junior who likes to play ping pong with his younger brother, he’s also a gifted engineer whose inventions have begun to have a global impact."  For One Teen Scientist, Love of Engineering Reaps Global Rewards

See Also: Success Stories in Gifted Education and (Early) College Planning and Success Stories

May 2013

19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From Oceans May 26, 2013

19-year-old Boyan Slat has unveiled plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans. The device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel...
 

Teen takes Google's self-driving car and makes it $71,000 cheaper May 18, 2013

So it becomes even more mind-boggling to realize that, on Friday, a 19-old-year high-schooler was given an award for developing an artificial intelligence that will dramatically lower the cost of self-driving cars. Ionut Budisteanu, the Romanian teenager who’s $75,000 richer thanks to the award, wanted to find a way to get rid of Google’s high resolution 3-D radar. He said Google didn’t worry about cost while developing the technology, and the high-res 3-D radar was the most expensive part. Without it, the cars would be far cheaper.

So that’s what he did...
 

Flint teen earns three college degrees before getting high school diploma May 18, 2013

When Jasmine Cofield walks across the stage to get her high school diploma next month, she'll already have something that most graduates have to wait years to get. Three college degrees. Cofield, 18, earned the associates degrees from Mott Community College while she was also taking her full high school class load at Mott Middle College...
 

Teen's invention could charge your phone in 20 seconds May 18, 2013

Waiting hours for a cellphone to charge may become a thing of the past, thanks to an 18-year-old high-school student's invention. She won a $50,000 prize Friday at an international science fair for creating an energy storage device that can be fully juiced in 20 to 30 seconds. The fast-charging device is a so-called supercapacitor, a gizmo that can pack a lot of energy into a tiny space, charges quickly and holds its charge for a long time...
 

Agoura Teen Heads to Grad School May 17, 2013

When Michelle Vaisman, 18, graduates from UC Berkeley this weekend, she will experience her very first graduation ceremony, according to her mother, Karen. "She skipped high school so she never had a high school graduation or received a diploma," said Karen.  Upon graduation from the College of Chemistry with honors, Michelle will be getting dual degrees, a bachelor of arts in applied mathematics from the College of Letters and Science and bachelor of science in chemistry from the College of Chemistry...
 

Nineteen-Year-Old Nuclear Scientist Has A Perfect Redesign For Nuclear Reactors May 16, 2013

People hear nuclear and think “bomb” instead of “the future.” Well, not Reno, Nevada resident Taylor Wilson, who aims to reinvent how America looks at nuclear reactors. Wilson become the youngest person ever to create nuclear fusion, which he did in his basement at age 14. Wilson recently gave an informational TED Talk about his ideas for a smaller, assembly-line redesign of reactors. Instead of using high-pressure water boiling to produce the steam to run a reactor’s turbines, Wilson designed a compact molten salt reactor which would both increase efficiency and power, with nearly no downside, and it drastically updates the ways that people can view fission...
 

Eighteen-Year-Old Finishes Triple Major, Will Pursue Doctoral Degrees in Math and Physics May 10, 2013

On Saturday, Walter will graduate with a bachelor of science degree in mathematics, physics and economics, a triple major in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. He is accomplishing the feat at age 18. What makes his accomplishment even more impressive is that he has a severe form of muscular dystrophy that forces him to use a motorized wheelchair.

“I really do just love learning,” said Walter, who was just 14 when he graduated from high school. “I like to learn as much as I can. I am willing to work and I want to work and learn. There’s an element of ability, for sure, but it wouldn’t mean much at all if I didn’t work as much as I do.”

January 2013

High School Student Might Have Found Cure For Cancer January 20, 2013

17-year-old Angela Zhang of Cupertino of California, just won $100,000 in the national Siemens science contest for potentially finding the cure...

October 2012

11-Year-Old Starts Pop-Up Internet Café to Raise Money for Red Cross October 31 2012

Superstorm Sandy left much of Hoboken, NJ underwater, but one enterprising 11-year-old found a way to help those around her in need. Lucy Walkowiak, with the help of her father, established a pop-up Internet café and charging station to help dozens of neighbors get a much needed gadget charge and Internet connection to the outside world...

 

12-year-old uses Dungeons and Dragons to help scientist dad with his research October 30 2012

In the meantime, the paper describing the results—delightfully entitled “Monsters are people too”—has been published in Biology Letters. Kingstone wrote it with postdoc Tom Foulsham, but Levy did the rest. He prepared the images, trained himself to use the eye-tracker, ran the experiment, and coded all the data. Accordingly, at the current age of 14, he’s the first author on the paper...

 

UC Berkeley’s youngest student unfazed by college rigor October 30 2012

Six years younger than most freshmen, Kiavash divvies up the time in his 18-hour days among some of the most challenging undergraduate courses on campus. In chemistry, biology and physics, his test scores have placed in the top 1 percent of the class. With community college credits, he has earned enough units to rank among juniors. He plans to take only two years to graduate with a degree in molecular and cell biology and a minor in bioengineering...

 

Unreal: The 'Unjunked' New Candy Made by a Super-Rich 15-Year-Old October 1, 2012

Unreal candy is a line of "unjunked" versions of the most popular candies on the market--it takes the corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, dyes, and preservatives of candies like M&Ms, Reese's cups, and Milky Ways and replaces them with blue agave nectar, organic palm oil, and other more natural ingredients. Turns out the company was started by a home-schooled 15-year-old in Brookline, MA, with a little help from his father...
 

Like Father, Like Son October 1 2012

A 10-year-old boy spends his summer vacation helping his chemist dad solve the structure of complicated materials.

 

The father-and-son team sat at the kitchen table for 2 days, poring over the dozens of electron microscopy images Döblinger had generated, as well as some X-ray diffraction data, which provides more precise information on the materials’ atomic positions. Hovmöller would explain to Linus what he was thinking about how the images all fit together, and when Linus didn’t understand something, he’d interrupt his father to ask. This made Hovmöller realize that he was rushing to conclusions. When he slowed down to clear up Linus’s confusion, he’d get new ideas. “In 2 days, we solved four new structures.” They published their findings in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Linus was listed as a coauthor on the paper...

August 2012

17-year-old girl builds artificial ‘brain’ to detect breast cancer August 2012

The cloud-based neural network took top prize in this year’s Google Science Fair. “I taught the computer how to diagnose breast cancer,” Brittany Wenger, the Lakewood Ranch resident, told me today. “And this is really important because currently the least invasive form of biopsy is actually the least conclusive, so a lot of doctors can’t use them.” Wenger wanted to create a way for more doctors to use the minimally invasive procedure, called Fine Needle Aspirate, in order to ease the process of having lumps examined...

June 2012

Flynn McGarry started cooking at age 10 after he became sick of his mother's bland dishes. Now at age 13, he's serving up gourmet meals at one of Los Angeles' hottest dinner spots. June 21 2012

"NBC Nightly News" recently profiled McGarry during its evening newscast. McGarry is fast becoming one of the hottest names on the culinary scene. John Sedlar, the head chef at Playa, allowed McGarry to take over his restaurant for one night. The culinary phenom produced a nine-course meal for a packed house. Entrees included trout with braised leaks and caramelized fennel, as well as a dish featuring nasturtium flowers. Did Sedlar have any fear in letting the teenager take over the kitchen? "I don't think it's risky at all because I've tasted Flynn's food," Sedlar told NBC. "This is as good as any restaurant in Los Angeles."

McGarry has certainly found his passion in the kitchen. But if you think it was a family tradition passed down to the young boy, you would be wrong...
 

14-year-old makes US Open June 13 2012

"There is zero pressure on him," Gold said. "This kid is the best player I have ever seen at 14. He hits shots that pros can't hit. And, with little pressure this week, I think he could do very well." Zhang spent the bulk of his childhood in Beijing, picking up clubs for the first time at the age of 6 and beginning to work with a coach at the age of 7. His mother, Hui Li, recognized his talent and brought him to the US to participate in a handful of tournaments when he was 10, and they haven't looked back since....
 

College freshman at age 9, medical degree at 21 June 3 2012

Sho Yano has been a college student for 12 years, but it's only recently that he looks as if he belongs, blending in with undergrad students in a Hyde Park coffee shop. This week, the 21-year-old will complete the journey he began as a 9-year-old college freshman, becoming the youngest student in the University of Chicago's history to receive an M.D....

May 2012

Louis Wasserman boosts innovation in programming May 2012

Since he arrived on campus as a first-year in 2008, Wasserman has emerged as one of UChicago’s leading “hackers,” a term for a passionate enthusiast of computers, programming, and technology. He has brought leadership to the group of ambitious computer programmers who, with his help, have made UChicago more competitive in global programming contests. In another quirky move, he helped establish a Chicago dress code at the World Finals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest...
 

6-year-old Lori Anne Madison, spelling bee qualifier, isn’t feeling any pressure May 25, 2012

Now 6, Lori Anne is the youngest contestant on record to qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Her ticket to the competition that begins Tuesday was the word “vaquero,” meaning cowboy, which she spelled correctly to win the Prince William County bee. But Speller 269, who will compete for $30,000, among other prizes, reports that she isn’t particularly nervous and isn’t cramming. 

“I just do as much as I can,” Lori Anne said. “I don’t stress out about it. Plus, I’m 6. I can always go back next year.” She said she hopes to win at age 8 or 9...
 

350-Year-Old Newton's Puzzle Solved By 16-Year-Old - Slashdot May 26, 2012

Shouryya Ray, from Dresden, has solved two fundamental particle dynamics theories which physicists have previously been able to calculate only by using powerful computers. Shouryya has been hailed a genius after working out the problems set by Sir Isaac Newton. His solutions mean that scientists can now calculate the flight path of a thrown ball and then predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall...
 

Teen's Pancreatic Cancer Diagnostic Wins $75,000 Intel Prize May 21, 2012

Jack Andraka, 15, won top prize at this year's Intel International Science and Engineering fair for his new method to detect pancreatic cancer! Based on diabetic test paper, Jack created a simple dip-stick sensor to test blood or urine to determine whether or not a patient has early-stage pancreatic cancer. His study resulted in over 90 percent accuracy and showed his patent-pending sensor to be 28 times faster, 28 times less expensive and over 100 times more sensitive than current tests.  One more article, this time from Forbes magazine, Wait, Did This 15-Year-Old From Maryland Just Change Cancer Treatment?
 

Extraordinary talents: Twin sisters achieve exceedingly rare feat May 14, 2012

After graduating from Xavier University with a 4.0 average in both chemistry and pre-med, 18 year old Asia Matthew went looking to beat the odds. She wanted to enroll at the prestigious University of Massachusetts Medical School in a selective PHD/MD program. Only the best get in. Hundreds apply and the school annually interviews only 40. From that group, between seven and ten are chosen. “I was nervous,” she admitted. “It’s hard not to be. This is the one thing that I’ve wanted for a long time and when you see it almost at your fingertips, you don’t want to do anything to let it slip.” Asia beat the odds and got accepted, a great coup for her and Xavier. But Asia isn’t making the journey on her own. Her identical twin sister Ashley is going too!
 

Against Chairs By Colin McSwiggen Spring 2012

Interesting and amusing article by gifted kid, Colin McSwiggen, Against Chairs takes on this ancient and regal bit of furniture from a new perspective...
 

All-Girl Team Wins Science Competition with Ingenious Pasteurization Contraption May 13 2012

Dave Banks, writing in his GeekDad blog for Wired, offers the Hippie Pandas as a ray of hope for anyone who worries that America has fallen woefully behind in STEM education. The all-girl team from Rochester, NY earned top honors at the FIRST 2012 Championship last week in St. Louis, where thousands of science-savvy kids gathered to compete with robotics projects and keep hope alive that America will not slip gradually back into a Stone Age of crude technology...
 

Muskogee Fifth Grader Heads to National Spelling Bee May 9 2012

Richelle Zampella is in the fifth grade. "I like being outside and listening to music and playing with my sister," said Zampella. Pretty much a typical 11-year-old girl. And Richelle loves to spell. "She's a go-getter. You can't give her things fast enough," said Cindy Lumpkin, her teacher. The "Okie from Muskogee" is one of two students heading to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington. And she just may be the hardest working girl in bee business.

"It may take us a minute to scan a dictionary page and it would probably take her five to ten minutes," said Lumpkin. Why? She has Nystagmus and Leber's Congenital Amaurosis. Richelle is blind...

March 2012

Adventures of a Teenage Polyglot March 9 2012

SOME people pick up a little Hebrew before their bar mitzvahs, or learn Spanish from their mothers, or can speak some Japanese from a semester abroad. Timothy Doner, 16, is not one of those people. In the fall of 2009, after studying for his bar mitzvah, he decided he wanted to learn modern Hebrew, so he continued with his tutor, engaging in long dialogues about Israeli politics. Then he felt drawn to learn Arabic, so after eighth grade he attended a summer program for college students at Brigham Young University. It took him four days to learn the alphabet, he said, a week to read fluidly. Then he dived into Russian, Italian, Persian, Swahili, Indonesian, Hindi, Ojibwe, Pashto, Turkish, Hausa, Kurdish, Yiddish, Dutch, Croatian and German...
 

TED Talk: Taylor Wilson: Yup, I built a nuclear fusion reactor March 2012

Taylor Wilson believes nuclear fusion is a solution to our future energy needs, and that kids can change the world. And he knows something about both of those: When he was 14, he built a working fusion reactor in his parents' garage. Now 17, he takes the TED stage at short notice to tell (the short version of) his story. "I started out with a dream to make a star in a jar, and I ended up … making things that I think can change the world."
 

Mexico teen prodigy is a psychologist at 17 March 7, 2012

The director of child psychology at the Center for the Attention to Talent is a child himself: 17-year-old Andrew Almazan, a prodigy who was reading Shakespeare and Cervantes at age 6...
 

January - February 2012

At just 14, UCLA math student Moshe Kai Cavalin has written his first book, 'We Can Do' February 23 2012

Moshe Kai Cavalin is in many ways your typical UCLA student. He arrived at UCLA, where the competition to get admitted is fierce, after earning an associate in arts degree at East Los Angeles College with straight-A record. And since the fall of 2010, he's been stacking up credits in the math department. But there is one thing: Cavalin, who was admitted at age 12 and turned 14 on Feb. 14, is one of the youngest students ever to attend UCLA. Oh, and another thing: He's already a published author...
 

10-Year-Old Girl Discovers New Molecule In Science Class

Clara Lazen is not your typical fifth-grader. The Kansas City, Missouri student was tackling an assignment in science class manipulating molecular models when she made an accidental scientific breakthrough...
 

The Boy Who Played With Fusion | Popular Science February 2012

Taylor would transform the family’s garage into a mysterious, glow-in-the-dark cache of rocks and metals and liquids with unimaginable powers. He would conceive, in a series of unlikely epiphanies, new ways to use neutrons to confront some of the biggest challenges of our time: cancer and nuclear terrorism. He would build a reactor that could hurl atoms together in a 500-million-degree plasma core—becoming, at 14, the youngest individual on Earth to achieve nuclear fusion...
 

California boy genius' book reveals life in college at age 8

The one thing 14-year-old Moshe Kai Cavalin dislikes is being called a genius. All he did, after all, was enroll in college at age 8 and earn his first of two Associate of Arts degrees from East Los Angeles Community College at age 9, graduating with a perfect 4.0 grade point average...
 

Meet math prodigy Jake Barnett January 15 2012

Every number or math problem I ever hear, I have permanently remembered," says Jake Barnett. The 13-year-old isn't talking about grade school math. He is taking college honors classes...
 

17-year-olds’ facial recognition software signals death of passwords January 13, 2012

Two 17-year-olds from a Northside school in Dublin (Ireland) have created a new facial recognition system that website owners can deploy to allow their users to log in without having to remember passwords...
 

California High School student devises possible cancer cure January 13, 2012

Born to Chinese immigrants, 17-year-old Angela Zhang of Cupertino, California is a typical American teenager. She's really into shoes and is just learning how to drive. But there is one thing that separates her from every other student at Monta Vista High School, something she first shared with her chemistry teacher, Kavita Gupta. It's a research paper Angela wrote in her spare time -- and it is advanced, to say the least. Gupta says all she knows is its recipe -- for curing cancer...
 

Child Prodigy-7 yr old talking about Exoplanet Kepler 10-b  

7 yr old college student talking about exoplanet Kepler 10-b in his Astronomy Journal Club in a college Astronomy class. This is his first technical talk in front of a college audience...
 

Flip book animation by a 6th grade girl

"My daughter used a blank memo pad and some markers. We uploaded the flip book using the Iphone app "Animation Creator" Hints: use markers that don't bleed through the pages. Start at the bottom page of the memo pad so you can trace the previous picture and just change each frame gradually. Use just the bottom portion of your memo pad so your pictures will animate when you flip through them."
 

For One Teen Scientist, Love of Engineering Reaps Global Rewards January 18, 2012

At 17-years-old, Javier Fernández-Han has earned the title of inventor and humanitarian. He’s just been named one of Forbes “30 under 30 Most Influential Americans” for energy innovation, and been recognized twice as one of the nation’s top high school inventors by Popular Science magazine. Three years ago, he also founded ‘Inventors without Borders’ as a way to bring innovative solutions to real-world problems in rural, poverty-stricken areas...
 

How do you become fluent in 11 languages? February 21, 2012

Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings has won a national competition to find the UK's most multi-lingual student. The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian. Entrants in the competition run by the publishers Collins had to be aged between 16 and 22 and conversant in multiple languages....
 

Incredible LEGO Printer Invented by 14-Year-Old Boy! February 28, 2012

Built with gray, red and white LEGOS, the mini-printer looks like a toy version of a drafting printer. Packed with gears, cables, and remotes, the LEGO printer is a future draftman’s dream. Three motors work together. The complicated gears and gear racks keep the movement fluid. Touch sensors help calibrate the robot, and tell the motors where to deposit each stroke of the pen. To create each image, Leon imports his chosen drawing to Paint.NET for editing, then exports it as a .PBM file, then the final image is then formatted with RobotC, then sent to the PriNXT...
 

MIT'16 Early Admissions Tube goes to Near Space!

MIT class of 2016 early action admits - "Hack the Tubes" project. I decided to send my Tube to the edge of space! I turned it into an Amateur Radio High-Altitude Ballooning project. I used two GPS-equipped ham radio transmitters (APRS) using the call signs AK4JG-11 (me) and K4ETY-11 (my dad) to send out position packets from the Tube so I could track it on the ground...
 

Project Lucy Loving Uganda's Children and Youth

100% of all money and supplies collected goes directly to the children of Uganda
 

Samantha Garvey's Incredible Story January 18, 2012

Seventeen-year-old Samantha Garvey is a high school student with a passion for science. Despite the fact that she and her family are homeless, she defied the odds by becoming a semi-finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search...
 

'The Scale of the Universe,' by Two Teenage Brothers

"My seventh grade science teacher showed us a size comparison video on cells, and I thought it was fascinating. I decided to make my own interactive version that included a much larger range of sizes," said Cary in an email forwarded by his mother. "It was not a school project -- just for fun. However, my science teacher loved it so much she showed [it] to the class! My brother, Michael, helped me put it on the internet."
 

Students, science teachers lash out at evolution-as-theory bill in Concord

Ten-year-old Jackson Hinkle, of Nashua, spoke quietly but forcefully to legislators Tuesday, outlining his thoughts against teaching evolution as a theory in New Hampshire public schools...
 

Fall 2011

Teen prodigy creates tablet PC November 20, 2011

For Chiman Prakash Reddy, trying to fit Integrated Circuits on a mother board and working out the next move in a game of Chess are just the same: they are just games. The 16-year-old prodigy, who doesn't have any formal education, has developed a tablet PC, named AVE, with features he claims can give top brands a run for their money. This also adds to the competition to the exploding tablet market in Hyderabad....
 

TEDxManhattanBeach - Thomas Suarez - iPhone Application Developer... and 6th Grader November 7, 2011

Thomas Suarez is a 6th grade student at a middle school in the South Bay of Los Angeles. When Apple released the Software Development Kit (SDK), he began to create and sell his own applications. "My parents, my friends and even the people at the Apple store all supported me," he says, "and Steve Jobs inspired me".
 

Google Science Fair 2012: How can I improve the human condition?  

Naomi, a 2011 Google Science Fair winner from Oregon USA, tells us about why science is important to her and why she researched the affects of pollutants on allergies...
 

Google Science Fair 2012: How can I reduce the carcinogens in grilled chicken?  

Lauren, a 2011 Google Science Fair winner from Pennsylvania USA, explains why her experiment about carcinogens was inspired by her evening meal!
 

Also listen to...
TED Talk: Award-winning teen-age science in action 

In 2011 three young women swept the top prizes of the first Google Science Fair. At TEDxWomen Lauren Hodge (age 13-14 category), Shree Bose (grand prize winner) and Naomi Shah (age 15-16 category) described their extraordinary projects-- and their route to a passion for science...

Winter 2011

Game of her life: For 14-year-old chess progidy Phiona Mutesi, chess is a lifeline January 10, 2011

Phiona Mutesi is the ultimate underdog. To be African is to be an underdog in the world. To be Ugandan is to be an underdog in Africa. To be from Katwe is to be an underdog in Uganda. And finally, to be female is to be an underdog in Katwe. She's 14, lives in the slums of Uganda and is just now learning to read. But Phiona Mutesi's instincts have made her a player to watch in international chess...

December 2010

Eight-year-old children publish bee study in Royal Society journal December 21, 2010

 “We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before.”

This is the conclusion of a new paper published in Biology Letters, a high-powered journal from the UK’s prestigious Royal Society. If its tone seems unusual, that’s because its authors are children from Blackawton Primary School in Devon, England. Aged between 8 and 10, the 25 children have just become the youngest scientists to ever be published in a Royal Society journal. Their paper, based on fieldwork carried out in a local churchyard, describes how bumblebees can learn which flowers to forage from with more flexibility than anyone had thought...

2002

Teenage Inventor Brings Sign-Translating Glove to NIDCD March 19, 2002

For high schooler Ryan Patterson, inspiration struck in the unlikely setting of a fast-food restaurant over an order of burgers and fries. "I was trying to think of a science fair project to do, and I thought, 'What have I seen over the past year that I can try to improve? What needs to be done?,'" recalled Patterson, an 18-year-old student at Central High School in Grand Junction, Colo. "Then I remembered a time when I was at the same restaurant and saw some people who were deaf who needed an interpreter to help them place their order. I thought I could try to develop an electronic method that would make it easier for people to communicate."
 

Last updated May 21, 2013