10-year-old lands PhD-level fellowship in Paris with robot wish
Girl sought help to build a robot to make the streets of Paris happy again and received the perfect response
One letter stuck out in the stack of applications from people with well-polished resumes applying for the Paris Summer Innovation Fellowship.
Eva, a 10-year-old girl, applied to the program in the hopes of receiving mentorship so that she could build a special kind of robot: one to make the streets of Paris "happy again."
"The streets of Paris are sad. I want to build a robot that will make them happy again," a summary of her application posted to Facebook read. "I’ve already starting learning how to code on Thymio robots, but I have trouble making it work. I want to join the program so the mentors can help me.”
Inspired by Eva's ambition, Kat Borlongan, a founding partner of the organisation hosting the fellowship, wrote her a response via an open post on Facebook.
Here's her perfect response to Eva:
Dear Eva,
The answer is yes. You have been selected as one of Paris’ first-ever Summer Innovation Fellows among an impressive pool of candidates from all across the world: accomplished urban designers, data scientists and hardware specialists. I love your project and agree that more should be done - through robotics or otherwise - to improve Paris’ streets and make them smile again.