12-year-old genius to study biomedical physics in Mexico

For the first time ever, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) will accept a 12-year-old child to study a Bachelors degree in biomedical physics after achieving a score of 105 at the admissions examinations for the 2019 school year .

The boy’s name is Carlos Antonio Santamaría Díaz , and he has already attended several college classes and earned diplomas at UNAM’s Faculty of Chemistry (FQ), the Center for Genomic Sciences (CCG), and the Materials Research Institute (IIM) .

“All I want to do is study, if doors are closed on me, I will climb through the windows,” he stated.

The greatest difficulty Carlos Antonio had to face in order to study at Mexico’s most prestigious university was the fact that “my parents tried to convince people to make me take admission tests for high school, because they thought it was all just a pack of lies,” claimed the boy.

When asked about how he did it, the recently admitted college student stated that the most important part was never giving up, even during the admission test, which he found very hard, especially regarding the calculation of linear equations.

“ You have to keep trying and never give up . There is always a way. I have also taken courses online, that’s how I studied biology and calculus, but it is also important to have the support of all your family. My parents are to thank for everything, all I do is study and pass tests, I take the final step to move on to the next level.”

His next goal is to build a mitochondria, which is one of the cell’s components, with aims to eventually building an entire cell to help him cure illnesses that are currently difficult to treat.

“I want to build a mitochondria from scratch, identify all of its processes, see how they relate to each other and, little by little, reproduce those processes in real life. I want to make a small mitochondria population and generate a medium for them to develop. Then we can move on to other organelles and build an entire cell, with which we can cure any disease,”

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