Dennis Hong: My seven species of robot. Prodigy prof skipped school until he started college at 12. The following is an edited version of an article published in the Jan. 18 issue of New Scientist (vol. 177, issue 2378, page 40--reprinted with permission).
The interview was conducted by Steve Nadis, a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. The original interview is available online. When he was 12, Erik Demaine talked himself into Dalhousie University in his home town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, despite having no grades or academic record to speak of.
Eight years and a Ph.D. later, he became MIT's youngest professor in the fall of 2001. TechCrunch. Ly.