The arrest of a 14-year-old budding inventor in Irving, Texas, earlier this week sparked outrage on social media on Wednesday.
Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman in high school, was detained by police on Monday after bringing a homemade clock to MacArthur High to show his teachers, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Despite Ahmed's claim that the device was just a clock, local police and teachers maintained that the invention was either a threat or designed as a hoax bomb.
He was brought to a juvenile detention center and suspended from school for three days. (The police ultimately decided against charging him).
Twitter erupted on Wednesday, with social media users tweeting under the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed to display their outrage. Responses were fairly uniform, fluctuating between disgust over potential racial profiling and anger for how school officials squelched Ahmed's scientific creativity.
More than 1 million tweets including #IStandWithAhmed have circulated since Wednesday, according to Topsy.
Tech professionals, specifically, have rallied, offering Ahmed some pretty epic opportunities. The teen inventor has been tapped by Google, Twitter, Nasa and even President Barack Obama to participate in events ranging from science fairs to exclusive tours.
Social media giant Twitter extended an internship to Ahmed, a donor provided him a full scholarship to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center's Space Camp and he has standing invitations to visit Facebook, Box, Google and his dream school, MIT.
"You are my ideal student. A creative, independent thinker like you is the kind of person who should becoming a physicist," Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an astrophysics professor at MIT, told Ahmed during an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday. "You are the kind of student we want at places like MIT and Harvard."
Even Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban wants in on the action:
"Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest," Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "The future belongs to people like Ahmed. Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I'd love to meet you. Keep building."
Ahmed confirmed that he has accepted Obama's invitation.