Working with an MIT professor, Zachary attacked the problem of whether hinged dissections always exist-that is, whether a single connected, hinged assembly can always fold between arbitrary configurations. Hinged dissections have been studied for more than 100 years, and many believed that they do not always exist. However, Zachary proved that they do in fact always exist.

Based on the strength of this work, Zachary was invited to participate in a yearly collaborative Computational Geometry Workshop at which he made significant contributions in both 2008 and 2009. In addition to all this, Zachary has maintained a near-perfect GPA.