Barış Can Emir is a 14-year-old university student studying genetics at the Children’s University in İstanbul. While his peers are just preparing for high school exams Barış has already completed high school in a very short period of time.
Fourteen-year-old Barış studies genetics at the Children’s University after completing high school in a short period of time.
When he was in the first grade he designed his first website and created software for a children’s game. Only 2 percent of children are gifted and Barış’s potential was discovered at very early age.
He was only two-and-a-half when he started reading vehicle number plates and billboard advertising. At that age he also started to question concepts he would hear on television such as “constitution” and “law.” When Barış was 3, a friend of the family who is a neurologist discovered his brilliance.
During a visit for a medical check up, Barış started reading a prescription note on the doctor’s desk. “Your child is probably a genius,” the doctor warned his parents. Following this, his parents took him to a child psychologist but an IQ test could not be performed due to Barış’s age. The psychologist did, however, say: “Currently your child’s intelligence is at the level of an 8-year-old. You need advice on this issue. If your child is not directed properly, he could end up being an unhappy individual in the future.” This caused his parents concern and they started reading books on how to raise a gifted child.
Barış started his primary education at a state school and then he went on to junior high school with a full scholarship. He has an interest in genetics and his family was astonished when he declared to his parents, “My brother’s and my height would not be any taller than yours, but if we were to have another brother, he would be taller than all of us.”
Last year Barış saw a prospectus for the Children’s University at İstanbul University on his school’s website and he immediately applied to join this university. During the application process students went through an intelligence test and Barış was in the top two out of 3,000 thousand students. Since last year he has been studying various subjects such as geology, biology, philosophy and other fields of science.
‘My dream is to earn a Nobel Prize for my country’
Barış, who is currently studying genetics at the Children’s University, says: “I believe genetics is going to be the profession of the future. There would be no crime in the world if identification cards were generated with gene numbers rather than identity numbers.”
Barış wants to study Bioinformatics at MIT in the US. “I do not want to be a fixed salaried information technology manager at a private company. My dream is to earn a Nobel Prize for my country in the field of science, ” he says. The young genius is also taking software programming, advanced mathematics and music lessons at the Science and Art Center (Bilsem), a school for gifted children opened by the Ministry of National Education.
Even though he has less very time for revision Barış has been achieving successful results during mock exams in the school, university and Bilsem. Barış says all these commitments were tiring him at first but he gotten used to it in time. “The lessons I have at university have helped me to learn about various sciences and have broadened my vision. The lessons I attend at Bilsem are like my hobbies. I do not do any of these for perfection, I enjoy participating in them,” he says.
Barış also enjoys playing the guitar and piano and he likes going to the movies. He says he does not feel any different from his peers and the only thing differentiating him from others are his interests. “They enjoy playing football and basketball and I enjoy science and art. I prefer reading books over football, but this does not make me any superior to others,” he says. Barış has also won various awards in memory and speed reading contests.
Barış participated during a visit to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, organized by the Children’s University in November 2010. Barış stated that he was amazed by the building and the works of the CERN scientists. He said he has developed an interest in particle physics since his visit to CERN.
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