Kairan Quazi/Instagram
Kairan Quazi went straight from 3rd grade to college, skipping homeschooling and high school altogether! For his precocious educational achievements, he has been labelled a “wonder kid.”
Kairan Quazi was born in Pleasanton, California on January 27, 2009. Kairan belongs to a family of Muslim Quazis from Manikganj, Bangladesh. His father is a chemical engineer and his mother a Wall Street executive.
Kairan’s remarkable educational journey started at the age of two, when he could speak in complete sentences. By kindergarten he was telling other kids and teachers about news stories he’d heard on the radio. He could make conversation with people several times his age.
Even though he attended the academically rigorous Quarry Lane private school, his third grade schoolwork wasn’t challenging enough for him. He had already developed a passion for calculus and organic chemistry which the school could not offer in its curriculum. His psychologist assessed him as “an outlier among outliers,” and recommended that Kairan was ready for a college.
In 2018, at age 9, Kairan simultaneously entered the Helios School for gifted children and enrolled in Las Positas Community College, where he studied mathematics and chemistry. There, “I felt like I was learning at the level that I was meant to learn,” he told the LA Times. At Las Positas, he became the youngest ever student and tutor, and was a highly regarded STEM tutor.
In 2019, after applying for many internships, he was finally accepted by Lama Nachman, director of the Intelligent Systems Research Lab at Intel. Kairan said his internship with Nachman “changed everything” for the better.
“Lama [Intel Labs] recognized that outlier circumstances demanded outlier access to influential mentors and challenging opportunities. In a sea of so many “no’s” by Silicon Valley’s most vaunted companies, that ONE leader saying “yes”…one door opening…changed everything,” he wrote in a post.
In 2020, at age 11, Kairan transferred to Santa Clara University (SCU) and studied computer science and engineering. In 2022, he completed an internship at a cyber intelligence firm, Blackbird.AI. In 2023, at the age of 14, Kairan graduated from the Santa Clara University School of Engineering, becoming their youngest ever graduate.
Kairan was recruited by American aerospace manufacturer company SpaceX in June 2023 to become the youngest engineer at Starlink, the company’s satellite internet team.
Kairan says: “It is my dream to have a career tackling challenging issues and effecting radical innovation in service of the common good. In addition to being fluent in multiple programming languages and frameworks, I am an avid reader and current affairs junkie.”
Kairan wants people to know about his unique situation so companies can reevaluate the biases in hiring.“Hopefully, I can open the door for more neurodiverse people like myself,” he said.
Kairan’s story is an inspiration to many young people around the world who aspire to achieve great things in their lives!
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