Nine-year-old Carlos Santamaría Díaz, considered to have high cognitive abilities, graduated with high marks in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
With the support of his parents, teachers and classmates, the child finished his course of 140 hours, which started in August 2015.
During the graduation ceremony, Santamaría Díaz received a folder with three diplomas. One was for his work it protein structures, in which he receive a 10. The second was for purification methods and protein analysis, in which he scored an 8. And in his third course of molecular biology principles and protein expression he received a 9.
He whispered to his best friend in class, 24-year-old Rafael Fernández Torres who commented, “We get along really well but, it’s a little strange in the sense that at first, you think that you’re talking to a small child, but after talking to him more you realized that he is brilliant and knows a lot.”
Santamaría Díaz’s mother said, “We are very pleased. We have put him on the right path. He practices track and feels really good about it because he does it with kids his own age.”
The child commented on his own work by saying, “I have three diplomas, one for each module. I was a little nervous when I started, but by the second week I felt better. I don’t know what to say, but I’ve been doing really well.”
The Industrial Revolutionary Party congratulated Santamaría Díaz on their Twitter page:
Carlos Santamaría con 9 años de edad, concluyó el diplomado en Bioquímica y Biología de la UNAM ¡Felicidades! pic.twitter.com/3uOYBiBCK4
— PRI (@PRI_Nacional) February 26, 2016
