Alex Sulkowski: Mad Scientist or Disturbed Genius?

Here's the thing about going to Yale: people always say to you, "Wow, you went to Yale. You must be some kind of a genius or something."

Well, no, sorry, I'm not a genius. I may not even be a something. But the absolute coolest thing about going to Yale was this: I got to meet geniuses. Bonafide off-the-wall, brains-coming-out-of-their-ears geniuses. I got to hang out with them, bask in the glory of their unfettered intellects, and generally enjoy the sensation of pure awe.

One of those geniuses was a guy named Alex Sulkowski. Alex was one of my roommates for my senior year and a good friend my entire time at Yale. He's also the most brilliant person I've ever known. He used to build remote-controlled tanks with video cameras and mounted water guns, then sit in our room and control the things through the TV, driving around campus and drenching people with the automated water gun. He built a robot with bulletproof skin that could detect when it had hit an obstacle and reverse direction. All kinds of cool stuff.

The best part about it? Alex isn't even an engineer or a roboticist by trade. This is the stuff he does for fun.

Last year, Alex won a contest for designing a mechanized exoskeleton. He's entered a new competition this year and sent me some pictures of his work-in-progress. It was so cool that I just had to share it with the world.