By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
A boy aged 11 has obtained a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium to become one of the youngest ever university graduates.
He is being shadowed by another boy, 13, who has launched four apps across the Atlantic in the United States and is interning at Stanford University in California.
Laurent Simons, from the Belgium city of Ostend, got a higher distinction than all other students after graduating with 85 per cent, according to Newsweek, which quoted Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
He also completed the course after just one year, rather than the usual three years.
At 11-years-old, Laurent is now the world’s second youngest graduate behind Michael Kearney, who received his degree in anthropology from the University of South Alabama in 1994 aged 10.
Laurent could have graduated even younger, but he dropped out of Eindhoven University in the Netherlands in 2019 when he was 9 years old, after officials refused to let him graduate before his 10th birthday on December 26.
“I don’t really care if I’m the youngest … it’s all about getting knowledge for me,” Laurent told De Telegraaf.
“This is the first puzzle piece in my goal of replacing body parts with mechanical parts.
“Immortality, that is my goal. I want to be able to replace as many body parts as possible with mechanical parts. I’ve mapped out a path to get there. You can see it as a big puzzle. Quantum physics – the study of the smallest particles – is the first piece of the puzzle,” he said.
“Two things are important in such a study: acquiring knowledge and applying that knowledge. To achieve the second, I want to work with the best professors in the world, look inside their brains and find out how they think.”
His graduation and distinction were confirmed by the University of Antwerp.
“Simons has been studying for his bachelor’s degree in physics since March 2020, and he now graduated with 85 per cent, which is the highest distinction,” an Antwerp University spokesperson said, reports The Brussels Times.
“This year, he also took some courses from the master’s program. After the summer, he will officially start his master’s degree.”
After he dropped out of Eindhoven University, Laurent’s father, Alexander, accused the college of criticising him for all the media attention his son was getting at the time showcasing his intelligence.
“If a child can play football well, we all think the media attention is great. My son has a different talent. Why should he not be proud of that?” he told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.
An Instagram account run by the Simons family, which features Laurent’s activities, has more than 51,000 followers.
Boy aged 13 creates 4 apps, interns at Stanford
Newsweek says, ask a child what they want to be when they grow up and you’ll invariably get answers such as football player, pop star or YouTuber.
However, when magazine asked Adrit Rao, a 13-year-old from Palo Alto, California, that same question, he said: “I want to go into computer science for sure.”
The young boy can speak with such conviction because, frankly, he has already achieved more in this field than most adults.
Barely into his teens and Adrit has launched four iOS apps, is CEO of his own company and is interning at the prestigious Stanford University in California, according to Newsweek.
He’s also a competent violinist, a competitive fencer and still finds time to play basketball with his friends, not to mention tackle his eighth-grade schoolwork at Greene Middle School. Essentially, he puts our 13-year-old selves to shame.
Adrit began coding when he was in the third grade during his lunch break with friends. Why? Because it “was really fun.”
In March 2020, at just 12, he began making apps after learning Swift, the programming language used for developing iOS apps.
The first app he created was for finding movies and TV shows. But the problem-solver soon began finding real solutions to issues America faced during the pandemic.
Adrit says he came up with the idea for ShopQuick, his second app, when: “I was going to grocery store once during COVID and I just realized how long the line was, and so many people were respiring in such a close space.
“I didn’t want to go to the grocery store when there [were] so many people around so I wanted there to be a way that people could find out if the grocery store line was long or not.”
The program utilizes crowdsourced data to inform users of the wait time.
Another app he created, Virtuthon, is to do with walking and connecting with others, two things we all strived to keep up with during quarantine.
“It is a competitive type of app which stores a group of users’ steps so you keep track of each others’ steps and do competitive walking,” he explains.
Newsweek adds that Adrit also created a philanthropic app called Get Involved Service Hours, which helps high school students log community service hours to get their President’s Award.
Seeking to solve medical problems with AI
The teenager is now working on an app at Stanford University under the guidance of a professor. It aims to help diagnose peripheral arterial disease, a condition that affects over eight million people over 40 in the US alone.
In the future he wants to continue developing medical apps.
“I am deeply interest in the applications of artificial intelligence in apps for medical. Solving medical problems with AI, and that AI is always going to be deployed on an app because that’s where it’s the most accessible.”
But what is his advice for youngsters that may want to follow in his footsteps?
“I would tell them to not give up and not be intimidated. There is a lot of material online these days; it used to be hard to learn coding but now there is YouTube, there are websites.
“Everything you need to know you can just look it up online and that is the best way to learn in my opinion.
“What you can do with apps and coding can really make a difference in people’s lives,” he says.