Arrested clock-building teen gets invites to NASA, White House, Facebook

Sept. 17, 2015

You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed Mohamed, a ninth-grader in Irving, TX, who was arrested earlier this week after bringing his engineering class project—an electronic clock—to school.

Irving might not appreciate Ahmed, but he’s welcome in my town. As boston.com reports, “MIT astrophysics professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein reached out on Twitter to the aspiring engineer, who was wearing a NASA shirt at the time of his arrest, to invite him to the university.” Ahmed responds that MIT is his dream school.

Ahmed also got invites from the White House and Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he took it to school.

“Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed.

“Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you. Keep building.”

Check out this picture at Vox with Ahmed in a NASA t-shirt and handcuffs.

@IStandWithAhmed

About the Author

Rick Nelson | Contributing Editor

Rick is currently Contributing Technical Editor. He was Executive Editor for EE in 2011-2018. Previously he served on several publications, including EDN and Vision Systems Design, and has received awards for signed editorials from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. He began as a design engineer at General Electric and Litton Industries and earned a BSEE degree from Penn State.

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