<p>According to the Smithsonian magazine profile,
“he and his father, Steve, a civil engineer, had been using carbon nanotubes to screen compounds in water from the Chesapeake Bay.”</p>
<p>“He and his dad built the Plexiglas testing apparatus used to hold the strips as he reads the current.” </p>
<p>Yup, all by himself. </p>
<p>“In September, Andraka attended high school so infrequently that a few teachers thought he’d dropped out.”</p>
<p>And there is your school support. At many schools, he wouldn’t have been allowed to skip school like that to work on a project. In our school district, that family would have been hauled into court to explain his truancy to the judge.</p>