He finishes his studies this week, next month he starts a full-time job at Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX: Kairan Quazi is only 14 years old. But he has already experienced a lot.
Kairan Quazi wears sneakers, shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Everything’s a bit wrinkled – he walks around like boys his age walk around. Only where he is standing is unusual: namely, all alone on the stage of a congress for computer experts in San Diego. He is doing the final presentation and is just ten years old. That’s four years ago now.
Quazi is graduating from college this week in Santa Clara, California. He is now 14 years old. Then he has a degree in computer science and is an engineer.
Studies at the age of eleven
From his point of view, the course actually went quite normally, he tells a local CBS station. “There’s nothing different there. I’ve made a lot of friends. And after a few days it wasn’t special that I was there.”
But of course he was the only 11-year-old student. And: Before him there was no younger graduate. Before his studies, Quazi had already done an internship at the chip manufacturer Intel.
A childhood in the fast lane
At the age of two, he spoke in full sentences, his parents say. And everything else went pretty quickly. In the third grade, his parents and teachers noticed that he wasn’t challenged enough. From then on he received special training. In the fourth grade he mastered 19 programming languages, he says in an interview for a YouTube channel. But he is also on a basketball team and tutors fellow students, says Quazi. “I am a tutor in differential and integral calculus, trigonometry, statistics and computer programming.”
Many think he missed his childhood, says Quazi. He sees it differently: “If that had been the case, I wouldn’t have had to finish school so quickly.”
From July at SpaceX
In July, Quazi will start working at Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. For this he moves with his mother to Redmond in the state of Washington. The department he’ll be working in is Starlink – he’s in charge of satellite technology. He will work a maximum of 40 hours a week – more is not allowed for 14-year-olds in Washington State.
In two years he can then get a driver’s license in the USA, vote in four years and drink his first beer in seven years.