Meet Mateo Castillo-Bonde, the 11-year-old Minneapolis guitarist who went from playing in his bedroom to performing before thousands with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
Mateo Castillo-Bonde, an 11-year-old from Minneapolis, left thousands at the State Fair Grandstand speechless, doing something most pre-teens his age do not. He played a guitar solo with the kind of precision that only comes from years of intensive…
Meet Daniel Zhang, the 17-year-old San Diego student who lost his grandmother to cancer at nine, then built a 72-card cancer game reaching 1,500 children
When Daniel Zhang was nine, cancer was something he could not understand. His grandmother had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and the months that followed were filled with hospital visits, treatments and questions that were difficult for a child…
Meet James Taylor, the 14-year-old Welsh football freestyler who taught himself on YouTube, set five Guinness World Records and finished third at a world championship
At 14, James Taylor has already made a name for himself on the international football freestyle circuit. The teenager from Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, recently finished third at the NextGen World Football Freestyle Championships in the Netherlands,…
Meet Claire Jiang, the 18-year-old New Jersey student diagnosed with juvenile arthritis in third grade who built a lab model of the disease; her research won $70,000
Claire Jian, Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, NJ (Source: Society for Science) An 18-year-old student who was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis in primary school has won seventh place and a $70,000 award in the 2026 Regeneron Science…
Meet Angel Marino, 18, whose first flight to Australia at seven sparked an aviation dream and led to a scholarship covering four years of tuition plus A$25,000 a year
For the uninitiated, now in its seventh year, the SYD100 Scholarship was set up to support people from underrepresented backgrounds in aviation including women and young people from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. For Angel Marino, the…
Meet Anvith Yalamanchili, the 17-year-old Dubai student who watched his brother’s school commute triple to 45 minutes and built a free carpool service that drew 1,000 sign-ups
Anvith Yalamanchili,17, has developed a car-pooling platform that has received institutional backing too from Damac When a student’s morning school journey in Dubai Sports City suddenly tripled from 15 minutes to 45 minutes after three new campuses…
Meet Rachel Chen, the 18-year-old Los Angeles student who expanded a 1997 quantum-math idea to describe entire particle systems with simple diagrams; she won $100,000
Rachel Chen, 18, won $100,000 for her innovative quantum mathematics research. (Photo: Society for Science) At just 18, Rachel Chen has taken a decades-old mathematical idea and expanded it into a visual framework for understanding complex quantum…
Meet Suborno Isaac Bari: The maths prodigy who caught Barack Obama’s attention, skipped five grades and graduated high school at 12
At 2 years old, Suborno Isaac Bari was already doing something that would later become a defining detail of his childhood: reciting the periodic table. Mathematics was developing alongside that early fascination with science, and his parents soon…
Meet Callum Smith: The 23-year-old armless racing driver who steers with his feet at 110mph, joins Team BRIT alongside quadruple amputee Harvey Phillips and targets a historic Le Mans debut
Callum Smith has joined Team BRIT alongside quadruple amputee Harvey Phillips. (Photo: SWNS) Callum Smith has never let the absence of arms stand between him and his passion for motorsport. The 23-year-old from Nuneaton, Warwickshire, was born without…
Meet Patrick Urban: The German dung beetle specialist who found a species never known to science among collected beetles
PC: University of Nebraska–Lincoln From university laboratories in Germany to beetle specimens collected from dung in China, Patrick Urban’s career has focused on insects that are easy to overlook. The German biologist specialises in dung beetle taxonomy…