A native of Bogota, Colombia,  Dr. Juan Claudio Nino became infatuated with science and math as a young child. Gravitating to something “less nerdy” than physics, he chose to study mechanical engineering along with his best friend.  It was a line from his professor that solidified his choice of study,  “If you were to put a piece of steel into a grinding stone and paid attention to the sparks it generates, you could tell the amount of carbon content in that steel.”

Now delving into the land of Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Nino helped invent a microchip that operates like a brain.  The chip consists of pathways that mimic electric pathways inside the actual brain."