A 12-year-old girl from Florida is making headlines for her academic talents and ambition.
Three years after earning her high school diploma at the age of 9, Sawsan Ahmed has now earned an associate degree from Broward College and is on her way to attending the University of Florida this spring, reports ABC News. Envisioning a career in biomedical engineering, she will study computer programming, chemistry and biology. She plans to eventually earn an M.D. or doctorate.
Inspired by her father, who works as a physician at the Cleveland Clinic's cancer center in Abu Dhabi, and by Andrea Gellatly, a biomedical engineer and team leader of the TV show "Battlebots," she told ABC that "physicians like my dad save lives one at a time, but if I invented technology that can work in medicine it could save many lives at once."
According to ABC, Sawsan's family noticed her academic talents early on during homeschooling sessions when she would progress through curriculum several years above her.
“All of her education has pretty much been child-led. Whenever she shows an interest in something, we sort of dive into it and try to follow her interest as best that we can,” Sawsan’s mother, Jeena Santos Ahmed, told ABC News. “We talked to her about new developments that we read about, we let her listen to NPR and learn about new scientific discoveries."