Weird Wednesday: High Schooler Breeding Innovation in Basement

11th grader Steven Udotong comes from a family full of intelligence—his father, a computer scientist, his mother, a physics professor, and his three brothers who either alumni or current students at MIT and Princeton—so it wasn’t that odd when he started to build a nuclear fusor from scratch in the basement of his New Jersey home.

After learning about nuclear fusion last year in his chemistry class, Steven took it upon himself to research the topic more, even joining an online community dedicated to fusion tips and instructions. He took the interest once step further, deciding he’d test his knowledge by creating a fusion device from scratch.

The device, which heats up ions and fuses them into helium, producing energy, is clearly no easy feat—let alone a cheap one. That’s why Steven started a GoFundMe page, which has currently raised over $2,000 for his project. His brother, who attends MIT, assists him in ordering the parts needed for the project, but Steven assembles everything himself, operating out of his workshop in the basement.

As he works to complete the fusor by the end of the summer, Steven has received support from both faculty and family. His physics teacher is confident he’ll successfully create the device, and his brothers encourage him to finish it as soon as possible. He’s even gotten the attention of Andrew Zwicker, a physicist and the head of public outreach at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who’s confident that Steven’s talent will allow him to revolutionize the world someday.

If you’re like me, and still have no idea what a fusor actually does, may we simply appreciate the fact that an innovative high schooler is creating what some people twice his age build for a living—and he’s doing it all from his basement.