Saad Nasser, The Wonder Boy
Stanford qualified, 11 year old, wonder kid who is pursuing computational neurosciences.
Saad Nasser, the little wonder boy who at the age of 11 is doing online courses on statistics, circuits and electronics and computational neurosciences from Udacity, MIT and University of Washington, has also won the Intel IRIS Fair Award, recently. Along with the God gifted brilliance, it is interesting to know, how careful planning and proper atmosphere at home provided by parents has shaped genius of the boy.
Saad won the Intel IRIS Fair award, IRIS stands for Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science, a research-based science outfit for which the Department of Science and Technology, industry lobby CII and Intel have come together to encourage a young generation of innovators. National winners of Intel IRIS will represent India at the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. So Nasser is all set to make a trip to Los Angeles — the venue of the fair — in May.
“What was the project Saad that won you the Intel prize?” “As processors keep getting bigger and bigger, wire delays begin to cause problems. Traditional ISAs hide wire delays in multiple microarchitectural ways, including pipelining etc, which complicates the design and increases power…,” he begins with ease and spontaneity that stuns everybody in the room.
Nasser, when he was 1, he did not play with toys. Instead, he wanted to look inside toy cars and gadgets. At 2, he was neatly unscrewing all his toys and gadgets to satiate his curiosity for what’s inside. At 5, he was reading his dad’s books on Java programming. At 7, he had finished a book on C++. Last year, he finished Stanford’s online courses on databases and cryptography.
Last month, he also won the Intel IRIS Fair award. His project was judged the best submitted by school students across the country. “He is a genius. The course he is doing at MIT is a pretty tough one,” says Sam Pitroda, currently adviser to the PM on public information infrastructure and innovations, and chairman of the National Innovation Council.
At 11, Nasser’s knowledge of science, programming can stump even seasoned engineers. He relishes the world of circuits and electronics. He can easily comprehend difficult and technical subjects like computational neuroscience that adults find difficult.
For Durdana and Pervez Nasser, Saad’s parents, it was a slow discovery. Pervez has his own business — he is a financial adviser — and works mostly from home. The only thing different at the Nassers’ home was that they never had television. “We felt that the first five years are very crucial for a child and we did not want to expose him to TV,” says Durdana. But their house was always full of books, and Nasser duly became a voracious reader.
As the parents slowly discovered their child’s genius, the journey was both exciting and difficult. “He had questions, questions and questions. Like an encyclopedia he would want to know the how and why of everything,” recalls his mother.
When Saad was enrolled in School teachers would not understand him, find him absent-minded and often did not know how to handle him. The teachers would request the parents not to teach him ahead of the class. The teachers would reprimand him on small mistakes. This would make Nasser quiet and sad. Everybody was trying to fit him into the system. And he just could not.
In 2008, Ranjita Sinha, 39, who had just shifted back from China to Bangalore with her husband, joined Clarence School in Bangalore as the class teacher for class II in which Nasser was studying. The first time she chatted with Nasser, he spoke about atomic theory. The next day he opted for aerodynamics. “Every day he had a new complicated topic to talk about. Even though I knew little about such things it was evident he hadn’t mugged it up,” she says. She started taking notes and after 15 days attempted to tell the coordinator about this wonder child. But she was brushed aside.
Sinha researched on gifted children, persuaded the school to give Nasser flexibility and freedom to study at his pace and started giving Nasser special assignments. It helped. At times, his answers were so difficult and yet original that teachers would find it difficult to mark. . Meanwhile, Nasser was finding school dull and boring and did not want to attend any more.
That’s when one of Sinha’s relatives introduced Nasser to Intel. They invited him to their Bangalore office where 15-20 engineers fired complex questions on processors, algorithms and C++ at the class III student. The answers flew back even faster, stunning the engineers.
Convinced of the boy’s genius, Intel stepped in. Today, Nasser has found two great mentors. Once a week he meets Intel’s Gautam Doshi over lunch and learns the secrets of computer science. And every Tuesday, he meets V Vinay, a former IISc professor and cofounder of two start-ups, for lessons on maths. “My means are limited. Finding the right resources to groom Nasser is a challenge. Thankfully we have found great experts like Mr Doshi and Dr Vinay, who are willing to give him time,” says a grateful Pervez. Vinay recalls his first meeting with Nasser with some amusement. “I was sceptical of Saad’s genius when they approached me. Such requests [to meet ‘geniuses’] are not unusual.” Then he met Nasser.
“He was different. The breadth and depth of his knowledge was way beyond his age,” he says. Vinay teaches programming to engineering students and he figured Nasser knew more than them at his age. What he finds particularly amazing is that he has seen geniuses who are great at one or two things. “I have not seen anybody who is so good at so many things,” he says.
The Nasser family is keenly aware of the potential pitfalls. The lives of Nasser’s parents revolve around him. For Nasser, an introvert, his father is his best friend devoting both time and attention he needs. It helps that Pervez works from home and takes his two boys (the other is 7) to play. To avoid bringing pressure on Nasser, they have not even put him through any IQ tests to judge his intelligence. “We do not want any undue pressure on him to perform or meet expectations. We just want him to feel normal and enjoy what he is doing,” says his mother.
Nasser is fortunate that he is based in Bangalore, which has allowed him to find two techie mentors. Nasser has also joined expert online groups in areas that he is keen to learn. With plenty of online courses from the world’s top universities, he is using massive open online courses extensively to educate himself. But as far as Nasser’s parents go, they will be happy with whatever their son is able to achieve with his genius and lead a happy life. They will not hold him hostage to their — or anybody’s — expectations.
Adapted from the article by Malini Goyal, 9 Mar, 2014, on Economic Times.
