A 10-Year-Old Scored a PhD Level Fellowship for the Sweetest Reason

The Paris Summer Innovation Fellowship boasts of bringing together “bright young minds” and granting them the resources to achieve great goals. This year, they stretched the “young” label a little farther by accepting a 10-year-old girl.

Kat Borlongan, a founding partner of Five by Five, the organization hosting the fellowship, posted an open letter on Facebook to the young applicant. She said that the young girl, Eva, had impressed the team with her bravery and fearlessness. She first summarized Eva’s pitch: “The streets of Paris are sad. I want to build a robot that will make them happy again. I’ve already start[ed] 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.”

“The answer is yes,” Borlongan told Eva in the public note. “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.”

Borlongan said that she was moved by Eva’s passionate and bold proposal. “There was nothing on the website that said the program was open to 10 year olds but—as you must have noticed—nothing that said that it was not,” she said. “You’ve openly told us that you had trouble making the robot work on your own and needed help. That was a brave thing to admit, and ultimately what convinced us to take on your project.”

The letter also clarifies that Eva will be able to receive help from the Thymio team whose robots she mentioned she worked on. In fact, Borlongan noted that the group’s president will assist Eva in the fellowship, and she will also receive a new robot to go with it.

In the end, Borlongan shares a lesson that everyone can take to heart: “Humility and the willingness to learn in order to go beyond our current limitations are at the heart and soul of innovation.” She added, “It is my hope that your work on robotics will encourage more young girls all over the world—not just to code, but to be as brave as you, in asking for help and actively looking for different ways to learn and grow.”

Read the full post here.