A 15-year-old from Luxembourg built his own arc jet wind tunnel and won the Ellison Scholars Prize at EUCYS 2026 in Kiel, Germany.
Rodion Zaichikov, 15, a student at the International School Luxembourg, won the Ellison Scholars Prize at the EU Contest for Young Scientists. His device pairs a nozzle with an arc jet to test a scramjet engine model above 3,000 °C. He even built the Schlieren imaging setup himself. “I saw a video of an arcjet in operation and wanted to see if I could build one myself,” he said.
Sousana Eang, director of the Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg, noted that “Rodion does not let the difficulty of a problem limit what he tries to achieve.”
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
37th EU Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) 2026 (Photo © Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg)
