August - 2008 issue > In Focus

By si Team

Teachers at Bell’s Matriculation School in Tirunelveli, would often complain about a young boy, S. Chandra Sekar, who would finish his work quickly and disturb other children in the class. To keep him quiet, his parents told the teachers give him some books to read after he finished his work so that he would not trouble other children. Little did they know that this young boy would become the youngest postgraduate from IIT-Madras. Two years ago, at 15, Sekar became the youngest engineering graduate in the country and on July 25, 2008, he received his M.Tech. degree at the convocation. The teenager had also topped his class.

Born on September 25, 1990, Sekar was a precocious child, according to his parents. A family friend, who noticed the boy’s inquisitiveness and ability to pick up things very quickly, thought it would be interesting to put him in an international certificate programme. At the age of 11, Sekar became the youngest Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Cisco Certified Network Associate.

In August 2002, he was appointed an honorary director of the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council – Center of Relevance and Excellence in Network Engineering. The same year, an Anna University committee assessed the boy’s capabilities and decided to admit him into the BE programme, which he cleared when he was 15. When he scored 99.32 percent in the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering, he left no room for academics at IIT-M to have second thoughts about admitting him into the M.Tech. course.

Prof. Pandurangan of IIT-M, under whose guidance Sekar works, says, “It’s a pleasure to teach and do research with him. He has showed mastery and mathematical maturity ahead of his age.”
“I want to continue as a researcher in TCS RMD in Chennai for some more time. I would also like to get a management degree at some point in my career so I won’t just have theoretical knowledge. Best of both worlds, you know,” Sekar says.

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