A genius student? Ha, they're nothing but ants at your feet!

Chapter 198 Project Team

"Bang!"

Someone suddenly jumped up from their seat and rushed over at the speed of a 100-meter sprint.

"Su Hao! You're amazing! Want to join our group?! Everyone in our group is a hunky guy! And they're all so nice to talk to!"

That sentence was like a starting gun. Immediately afterwards, three or four more people pounced on the desks like hungry tigers, almost simultaneously rushing over!

"No! Su Hao, come to our group!"

We'll take care of all the manual labor, even if it means going without sleep!

"Get out of my way! Choose me, Su Shen! I'm very good at organizing complicated data!"

My programming skills are top-notch in our department; I can type whatever you point to!

"You just need to say the word, and I'll take care of the rest!"

"Make way! Statistics and probability theory are my absolute strengths!"

Before coming to MIT, I independently completed a data analysis for an entire paper on nonlinear regression at the core think tank R Studio!

Su Hao, I'll do anything for you!

Those top geniuses who were usually aloof and looked down on everyone else had no bottom line at this moment.

They were all scrambling to promote themselves, just like middle-aged women grabbing the last cabbage at the market.

Faced with this group of classmates with whom they had no prior interaction, whose names they couldn't even recall, who swarmed in like zombies unleashed, almost ready to fight...

Even Su Hao, with his exceptional intelligence, was momentarily at a loss for what to do in this surreal scene.

Tap, tap.

Just as things were in complete chaos, a series of crisp, menacing footsteps sounded.

Ellie grabbed her backpack, her eyes sharp, and strode towards the center of the crowd.

She shoved aside the group of people around her who were exuding an air of flattery without any politeness, or even rudeness.

Amidst a sea of ​​astonished gazes, he grabbed Su Hao's wrist tightly.

"Get out of my way! Go find someone else!"

Ellie roared like a lioness guarding her prey, "He's already teamed up with us!"

The students around him were stunned for a moment, and they all looked at Su Hao for confirmation.

Faced with this somewhat awkward situation and feeling the undeniable force on his wrist, Su Hao gave a wry smile and nodded subconsciously.

"Oh dear, I'm too late!"

"Ellie, you were way too fast!"

"Su Hao, next time! Next time, you absolutely have to be in our group first! I'll bring you breakfast for a month!"

With sighs of regret and lamentations, the students dispersed, looking back repeatedly as if they had missed out on a project worth hundreds of millions.

.......

The autumn wind rustled past the benches along the tree-lined path outside the teaching building.

Click.

A crisp, clear sound rang out as the pull tab of a soda can was pulled.

"Drink it."

Ellie bought a can of chilled drink with water droplets still on it from the vending machine, walked back to the bench, and shoved it into Su Hao's hand.

"Thanks."

"Don't misunderstand."

Ellie brushed her wind-blown blonde hair aside, sat down beside him, and gazed at the shimmering Charles River in the distance.

"I'm not necessarily going to beg you to team up with me."

I simply couldn't stand the way those people had been harboring ulterior motives and had their eyes gleaming with greed just now.

People who are only thinking about how to curry favor with powerful figures and get something for nothing—I despise those kinds of people the most in my life.

What she said is true.

Shamelessly "hitching a ride" and "getting free help" in academic groups is indeed one of the behaviors that Ellie hates most in her life.

After all, back in high school, she was so outstanding that she was often tricked into doing countless chores and suffered a lot of injustices in silence.

"Exactly! I also utterly despise those kinds of people! They're a cancer on academia!"

Jason, who had somehow sidled up to us like a shadow, naturally picked up the conversation, his face full of righteous indignation.

"Now that we've teamed up, what research topic does Ellie want to work on? The professor's scope is quite broad. What about Su Hao?"

Ellie crossed her arms, pondered for a moment, and gave a very ambitious answer.

"Hmm... I think that among those dozen or so topics, urban traffic flow prediction is the most relevant and also the most challenging."

"Really?"

Upon hearing this, Su Hao's previously calm eyes instantly lit up.

"Would you be willing to work with me on this project about transportation?"

Su Hao still harbored an unresolved "old debt" regarding the complex switching logic of city traffic lights.

That was a lingering obsession he had when he was young, faced with an extremely complex and nonlinear traffic signal system, which he was unable to fully analyze due to the limitations of his computing power and knowledge at the time.

But now, having undergone a knowledge restructuring at the MIT level, he is absolutely confident that he can completely dismantle this system!

"Sure, why not?"

Ellie shrugged, looking quite relaxed.

"Anyway, I will never hold you back when it comes to work, so don't worry."

"Me too! I absolutely love cars! Model cars sound so cool!"

Jason excitedly waved his fist.

And so, the three-person project team was formed in an extremely relaxed and casual atmosphere.

However, neither of them anticipated that they would soon regret their hasty decision.

........

"Achoo—!"

Although the calendar has only just turned to September, the early morning winds in Boston, on the Atlantic coast, are already carrying a chilling cold.

It was still dark, and the whole city was still asleep.

At that moment, Jason was pitifully squatting at a giant intersection in downtown Boston, wrapped up like a dumpling, his nose running from the cold.

He stared intently at the traffic lights above him, clutching a stopwatch in his hand, frantically scribbling down a string of jumbled time data in his notebook during the brief intervals between each signal change.

"Damn it! Boston's transportation system... what was the guy who designed it thinking?!"

Jason wiped his nose and cursed loudly.

For tourists who are just passing through, Boston may be a romantic city steeped in history.

But for locals, especially those who drive, the convoluted road conditions here are a complete nightmare.

"How on earth was this route designed? Even a dog could stomp on a piece of paper and still look better! How could it be such a mess?!"

Jason stared at the tangled red lines on the map, which resembled a ball of yarn, and couldn't help but groan.