California 18-year-old taking coding world by storm

LOS ANGELES – At just 18-years-old, Angelina Tsuboi is known as the “Queen of Coding.”

She is a programmer, mechatronics engineer, and scientific researcher whose work spans astrophysics, artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, she’s also a pilot and recently started her own cybersecurity company. 

Tsuboi also became the youngest speaker at an annual aerospace cybersecurity conference at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

She told FOX 11 that her love for computers began at the age of seven when she took her first computer science class in elementary school.

“Ever since then, I started this little maze game project and it became this overwhelming obsession of mine. From games, I moved on to app development, and then website development, and from there I got into the cybersecurity realm.”

Tsuboi, who is about to graduate high school this week, is fluent in 20 programming languages and proficient in about 30 others.  

She has created over a dozen apps and even presented some to Apple CEO Tim Cook during the Worldwide Developer Conference.

Angelina Tsuboi and Apple CEO Tim Cook 

Tsuboi was accepted to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena but will take a gap year to help teach kids in underprivileged communities around the world about STEM. 

“I was raised in an environment where STEM was always at the forefront. It was always exciting, but a lot of kids aren’t really given the same exposure.”

In addition, she created what she calls a Meow Mixer, which is a small device that young kids can use to learn about electronics and soldering. 

“Something as simple as this can inspire a lot of kids to get really interested in electronics and STEM in general, and I really want to take that time off to inspire them,” she told FOX 11. 

Her ultimate goal in life is to help people through technology.

“I want to develop engineering solutions at a wide scale in order to help humanity as much as possible and be a positive impetus for society as much as possible, using programming and my skill set in cybersecurity for now. But, technology’s always changing, and I think I’ll be shifting my scope as I progress towards my career.”