Meet the East Bay 9-year-old who's in fourth grade and college

Kairan Quazi, 9, lives in Pleasanton and attends classes at Las Positas College. His IQ is above the 99.9th percentile of the general population. Kairan Quazi, 9, lives in Pleasanton and attends classes at Las Positas College. His IQ is above the 99.9th percentile of the general population. Photo: Courtesy: Jullia Quazi Photo: Courtesy: Jullia Quazi Image 1 of / 57 Caption Close Meet the East Bay 9-year-old who's in fourth grade and college 1 / 57 Back to Gallery

Every weekday Kairan Quazi, a fourth grader, attends elementary school in Sunnyvale. In the evening, he goes to college.

"My weekdays are a little crazy, honestly," Quazi, 9, told me in a FaceTime interview last week. After finishing up his day at Helios, a school for gifted children in Sunnyvale, Quazi attends class at Las Positas College in Livermore. His majors are math and chemistry.

His parents say doctors have qualified him as "profoundly gifted," meaning his IQ is above the 99.9th percentile of the general population. He is a member of Mensa International and a Davidson Institute Young Scholar. He is also disarmingly charming and extroverted — traits that signify he has high executive functioning, an uncommon characteristic for profoundly gifted children.

"People always ask if I'm a 'genius,'' he writes in a recent op-ed for Huffington Post, "but my parents explain that genius is an action — it requires solving big problems that have a human impact. Right now I am a 9-year-old boy with very strong skills in some areas."

His parents, Jullia and Mustahid Quazi, seem to have taken their child's above-average learning abilities in stride. Until last year, he was enrolled at a academically rigorous private school in Pleasanton. By third grade, Quazi was teaching himself calculus and organic chemistry, but the school was inflexible in altering its sequential syllabus.

After consulting a series of specialists, the Quazis enrolled Kairan at Helios and Las Positas College. He's thriving — and performing at the top of the class.

In his second semester at Las Positas, Quazi is enrolled in psychology, statistics and — if he gets off the waitlist — calculus.

At first, he was "a bit nervous" to take college classes, "but everyone warmed up to me after the first few weeks." His professors, he said, "sometimes encourage me to let other people answer because my hand is always up."

Paula Schoeneker, an emeritus disabilities specialist and learning skills instructor at Las Positas, met with Quazi before he was granted admission.

"At first I was hesitant for him to attend college," she said in an email. "I worked a lot with students on the autism spectrum who were borderline genius in a given area but lacking in social skills, theory of mind, and self management." These students have high potential for in-class meltdowns and often get frustrated, she said.

"Not so with Kairan." Schoeneker observed a "growth mindset" in the nine-year-old: "What some students would see as an obstacle, he sees as just something he has to figure out to get to the next step."

Quazi hopes to graduate from Las Positas (and Helios) in the next two years to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From there, he plans to pursue a graduate degree.

When I asked Quazi what he wanted to be when he grows up, he gave me an answer that only a Silicon Valley child could. "I want to be an innovator," he said. His planned fields for innovation include artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

The nine-year-old is well on his way toward attaining that goal. At seven, he learned Python at a coding school for children in Pleasanton, and from there, taught himself 11 additional coding languages.

In the spring, he'll begin working with a Fortune 500 tech company to develop the next generation of adaptive communication systems (the device that gave physicist Stephen Hawking a voice). Quazi can't reveal the name of the company for a few more weeks, while HR decides upon his title and his hours. He also plays piano, is learning Mandarin and has a brown belt in martial arts.

In his free time, Quazi does what most kids his age do. He runs around with his friends, plays Fortnite and collects Pokemon cards. But his interests diverge from his peers in certain fundamental ways.

Quazi is a self-described "political junkie" who loves to read. He's currently engrossed in George R.R. Martin's "Game of Thrones" series. It's more appropriate than the tv show, he stressed during our interview, to which his mom concurred.

Does he ever get tired of his active, intellectual lifestyle? "Sometimes," he said, "but it's worth it, I think."

In just a few days, Quazi turns 10 years old. He's celebrating in a most unusual way: "I'm flying to New York to be on Good Morning America!"

Read Michelle Robertson's latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com.

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