For Ng, one of his next challenges might include having a child with his roboticist wife, Carol Reiley. “I wish we knew how children (or even a pet dog) learns,” Ng says in an email follow-up.

A SMALL WEDDING Ng met his roboticist wife, Carol Reiley, at a robotics conference in Kobe, Japan. They married in 2014 in Carmel, California, in a small ceremony.