Thaddeus Hughes with Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Thaddeus Hughes was recently honored by being chosen as one of 20 Illinois high school students by Celebrating High School Innovators 2015.

With the lack of STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) resources in his community, Thaddeus Hughes, a homeschool high school senior from Funks Grove focuses on getting youth to explore their interests through self-discovery and mentoring.

He dislikes when students make statements such as, “I don’t know anything,” or “I’m not good at math.”

His interest for helping youth started with his involvement in the 4-H mentoring program in his county along with participation in the Students Involved in Technology Conference.

He has mentored 200 youth in his community as well as assisting in the First Lego League and Illinois State Robotics Competition.

He was also involved in a 14-233k afterschool mentoring program called “Spinning Robots.” …Not only did he design the Spinning Robots curriculum, but he educated the students on existing background technology programs.

On top of the numerous mentoring programs and countless hours of service that he provides to the youth in his community, Thaddeus still manages to create inventions that are nothing short of amazing. This past summer, he began to work on his own version of cloud file storage, which he named “Uberbox.” He was able to successfully complete his work on this invention in two months. The invention is an implementation of Dropbox but has an in-house server to maximize local transfer speeds, keep data privately owned and still allow for access anywhere.

After graduation, Thaddeus wants to study Mechanical Engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology or Bradley University in Peoria.

The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry), in partnership with Paul Ritter, a dynamic and innovative high school teacher, committed to identify and celebrate some of the most innovative, creative, and inspirational high school students in Illinois. The program has the endorsement of several Illinois teachers’ associations, the regional superintendents of schools, the University of Illinois and the Governor. Awards were made at a celebration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in early May.