Carnegie Mellon University

Erdem Yiğit Ertörer, a 26-year-old Turkish Ph.D. student in the U.S., has realized his childhood dream to work at CERN by qualifying to participate in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the five major experiments conducted at CERN.

Doing his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, Ertörer is expected to spend about three years working on CERN's CMS experiment.

One day recently, on a table in Jean Oh's lab in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a robot arm was busy at a canvas. Slowly, as if the air were viscous, it dipped a brush into a pool of light-gray paint on a palette, swung around and stroked the canvas, leaving an inch-long mark amid a cluster of other brushstrokes. Then it pulled back and paused, as if to assess its work.

When Peter Maillis told his 7-month-old son William to go to bed, William replied, “I don’t want to,” KDKA reports. It was clear from very early on that William was no ordinary child, and he recently proved that once again by becoming—at 9 years old—one of the youngest people ever to be accepted into college.

The International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems took place in Hamburg, Germany. A Greek distinction made its way to the top four projects for the Best Conference Paper Award from a total of 970.

The shortlist: