- It’s fascinating to note how Mother Nature keeps unraveling not-so-easily decipherable wonders on mere mortals inhabiting this beautiful Earth from time to time. Human ingenuity, diligence, persistence, resilience, and the perpetual quest for conquest, driven by inquisitiveness to explore the unexplored, have paved the way for innumerable innovations, inventions, developments, and growth over millennia. While we bask in the glory brought about by these epochal initiatives, we are also left to wonder how a few precocious talents, irrespective of age, have unleashed their extraordinary abilities for the greater benefit of humankind. As the popular saying goes, there is no right time or age to unveil if someone is endowed with special talent.
PC: Times Now
- Since time immemorial, history is replete with instances of how humanity itself has been served by so many specially gifted personalities going to extraordinary lengths in their pursuit of excellence. One such instance was on display when the reputed IIT-Kanpur made a smart move by hiring Nisarga. Let’s not wonder as to who this Nisarga is. Nisarga Adhikary, the 19-year-old who became a household name last month after exposing flaws in CBSE’s on-screen marking system, has made it to IIT Kanpur. Not as a student, but as an employee. As reported, he will work as an open-source intelligence and threat intelligence engineer, for which he’s already demonstrated capability. That’s a very smart move by IIT. How so? Let’s dwelve further into this wonderful news.
PC: IE Education
- IIT-Kanpur deserves due credit for not letting Nisarga’s age and brief CV – he passed Class 12 this year – stand in the way; it’s shown a startup’s agility. And since Nisarga himself doesn’t set store by degrees – “You don’t need a degree to be an engineer” – employers and employees are on the same page. Of course, doubters might wonder whether 19 isn’t too young for a full-time job in a critical role. They only must look at David Dworken, now a security engineer at Anthropic, who became famous as an 18-year-old, back in 2016. David participated in the Pentagon’s Bug Bounty programme while appearing for his high school exams and revealed some vulnerabilities in its public websites. There’s also Marcus Hutchins, who found a ‘kill switch’ for WannaCry ransomware that spread to over 100 countries in 2017, and cost $4bn-$8bn globally. Marcus had a dark past.
PC: India Today
- For the uninitiated, as a teen, he had built malware named Kronos and UPAS Kit, for which he was arrested in the US. But his ethical turn as a ‘white hat’ saved the world a lot of trouble. So, IIT Kanpur’s confidence in Nisarga is well-founded. And Indian institutions should tap such young talent more often. In fact, Pentagon-style bounty programmes can save them the kind of embarrassment CBSE went through recently. They’re also cheap. Where a US Dept of Defencecontractor charged $5mn over three years, and found only 10 vulnerabilities, bug hunters like David revealed more than 130 in days, for a total bounty payment of $75,000. As such, age cannot be looked down upon, but super talent should be recognized and encouraged at an early stage.
