NEWS : 17-year-old honored with MTech from IIT

Chennai: It is going to be a milestone for S. Chandrasekar tomorrow. Two years back Chandrasekar at 15, who became the youngest engineering graduate in the country, will be the youngest postgraduate from IIT Madras when he receives his degree at the convocation. September 25, 1990 born teenager tops in the class, says Times of India reports.

It is a family friend, who discovered the boy's inquisitiveness and picking up things very quickly. So they thought it would be interesting to put him in an international certificate program. Thus at 11 years, Chandrasekar became the youngest Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Cisco Certified Network Associate. In August 2002, Chandrasekar was appointed an honorary director of the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council Center of Relevance and Excellence in network engineering.

In 2002, an Anna University committee, headed by Vice-Chancellor Dr Balaguruswamy, assessed the boys capabilities and decided to admit him into the BE program, which he cleared when he was 15. He then took the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering and scored 99.32 percentile, which left no room for academics at IIT-M to have second thoughts about admitting him into the MTech course.

"The best thing about him is his consistent performance. When he is interested in something, he pursues it with great commitment and purpose," says Subramanian. BE was not very tough.

"In the first semester the environment was new, so I had a little difficulty both academically and psychologically. But Dr Thangaraj, now Vice-Chancellor of Kalasalingam University, gave me a nice home-like atmosphere, and after the first four or five months there was never a problem, says Chandrasekar.

Chandrasekar's father R Subramanian, an auditor, "Chandrasekar was a precocious child, according to his parents. His teachers used to complain that he would finish his work quickly and disturb other children, so we asked them to give him some books to read after he finishes work so he doesn't trouble the other children."