A nine-year-old boy who is studying electrical engineering at the University of Technology in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is set to be the youngest ever graduate after nine months.
His university is saying that he is three times smarter than any student they’ve ever had, The Punch reports.
According to Sky News, Laurent Simons, who is inspired by inventor Nikola Tesla, spent just nine months to complete a degree that would normally take three years to do.
Laurent is rated to possess an IQ of 145, and will graduate in December.
He has reportedly expressed his plans to start a PhD and to also “study a little medicine.”
He says he wants to research artificial organs and develop a Terminator-style artificial body.
As an undergraduate at Eindhoven, he has been working on a research project involving “placing neurons and making connections” to test the effects of different medication on the brain.
It is not all about learning for Laurent, though, as he spends his free time playing Fortnite and Minecraft, while he also looks after his nine-week-old puppy named Sammy, and also entertains almost 40,000 followers on Instagram.
The university has been amazed by his progress, having joined after completing high school in a single year, Sky News notes.
Programme director Sjoerd Hulshof said: “Every professor is really enthusiastic about having Laurent and for us, it’s a unique situation of course because he’s the youngest student we’ve ever had.
“The speed of his mind — we cannot imagine what is happening in his head. He’s maybe three times smarter than the smartest student we’ve ever had.”
Laurent will comfortably be the youngest person in history to obtain a university degree, beating the previous record by more than a year.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, American Michael Kearney was aged 10 years and four months when he graduated in June 1994.
Laurent could also end up in the US for his PhD, but his parents are not putting him under any pressure to make a decision.
Father Alexander said: “What he’s doing now is playing with education, just playing around, and that’s fine with us.”
Photo: CNN