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FROM:
The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper
04.29.98
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Sanjit Biswas, 16, applied for an internship with Oracle last year. Instead, he landed a job as a computer engineer. In his spare time, he designs the web pages for Fremont Union High School district and scores perfect 1600s on the SAT.
Move over, Doogie Howser; here comes Engineer Biswas
By Justin Berton
Last summer Sanjit Biswas, then 15 years old, got his very first job.
Like any proud father, Prasenjit Biswas had a good friend inside the company keep a helpful eye on his son's application as it worked its way up the ladder.
And within a few days of being hired, Sanjit had settled into the first-job routine every teenager endures, only his was a bit different.
Instead of nodding to the crew chief, Sanjit flashed his ID card to the security guard at the front door. Instead of sauntering through the glass doors of a retail clothing store, he took the elevator to the 13th floor of the 400 building at Oracle world headquarters in Redwood City.
Instead of manning the grease machine and being dubbed "the french fry guy," the 15-year-old would make his way to cubical No. 1301 and get to work as a computer engineer.
A Lynbrook High School senior, Biswas, now 16, is the youngest person to work for the mammoth database company. Larry Ellison, the company's CEO, told him so in a recent meeting. "We got to shake hands and talk about small stuff," Biswas said.
"He was real charismatic," he said of the man who plans to put the Internet inside every television set in America. "If he were a salesman, I'd buy something from him," he added.
It's Ellison who might be buying a few pointers from Biswas in the near future.
After being one of 500 teenagers in the country who scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT last year, Biswas is set to attend Stanford University in the fall.
He sees grad school on the horizon, then a start-up computer company, perhaps, and maybe some R&D if that doesn't work out.
By that time, he should be eligible to vote.
"I don't set goals in terms of years," he said.
Last summer, Biswas worked on a 10-man team that tested the speed at which computers that use the Oracle database communicate with one another.
Biswas helped create a system that could test the speed of the communication.
"And I improved on that system I was testing," he said.
Biswas' interest in computer engineering started at age 8, when he began thumbing through his father's books on the topic.
"As a child you want to do what your parents are doing. It's the imitation thing," he said.
When he sent out five polished résumés last summer, he was hoping to land an internship. That's what Oracle offered him at first, then took him on as an employee.
"Cool," Biswas said his first thought was when he got the call from the human resources department. "Then I got kind of nervous because I didn't know much about the database they were using."
Books arrived via Federal Express shortly after to calm his nerves.
Biswas said the guys at work didn't take much notice of his age, and only gave praise for being involved in the field as a teen.
They also say he is a talented computer engineer.
"The only time where his age became apparent was when he had to rush out of work so his mom could pick him up," Peter Ogilvie, a fellow computer engineer at Oracle, said of Biswas, whom he referred to by his middle name, Zubin.
"Zubin's ability to absorb, comprehend and contribute would have been excellent if he were a recent college grad. But considering he was only a 15-year-old high school student, it was nothing short of amazing. While we were working together, I viewed Zubin as a colleague."
To pad his résumés , Biswas also designs and builds Web pages for the Fremont Union High School District, serves on the student executive board and writes for the school paper, The Epic.
Currently, he's waiting to hear from the folks at Westinghouse to see if he'll be the recipient of the annual $40,000 grand prize for scholarly achievement.
Each year the company receives thousands of papers, dissertations and proofs from scholars in all fields of work with new, exciting breakthrough theories. Applicants in years past have taken a stab at a cure for cancer. Biswas sent his 26-page paper titled, "Using the Normal Vector of a Three Dimensional Plane in a UNIX Environment."
In other words, he's made it more difficult for hackers to slip past computer passwords.
But Biswas still has some unfinished work closer to home.
He still has 30 hours to work off his learner's permit before he can get his driver license. With the senior ball just two weeks away, the man needs wheels.
"I hope I'll have it by then," he said.
TO THIS:
Sanjit Biswas, CEO and Co-Founder Meraki
Sanjit Biswas is responsible for Meraki’s strategic direction and day-to-day operations. He is currently on leave from the Ph.D. program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he co-led the research project that won several academic awards and later became the foundation of Meraki’s wireless mesh technology. Sanjit holds a B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford, and an S.M. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
FROM:
The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper
04.29.98
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Sanjit Biswas, 16, applied for an internship with Oracle last year. Instead, he landed a job as a computer engineer. In his spare time, he designs the web pages for Fremont Union High School district and scores perfect 1600s on the SAT.
Move over, Doogie Howser; here comes Engineer Biswas
By Justin Berton
Last summer Sanjit Biswas, then 15 years old, got his very first job.
Like any proud father, Prasenjit Biswas had a good friend inside the company keep a helpful eye on his son's application as it worked its way up the ladder.
And within a few days of being hired, Sanjit had settled into the first-job routine every teenager endures, only his was a bit different.
Instead of nodding to the crew chief, Sanjit flashed his ID card to the security guard at the front door. Instead of sauntering through the glass doors of a retail clothing store, he took the elevator to the 13th floor of the 400 building at Oracle world headquarters in Redwood City.
Instead of manning the grease machine and being dubbed "the french fry guy," the 15-year-old would make his way to cubical No. 1301 and get to work as a computer engineer.
A Lynbrook High School senior, Biswas, now 16, is the youngest person to work for the mammoth database company. Larry Ellison, the company's CEO, told him so in a recent meeting. "We got to shake hands and talk about small stuff," Biswas said.
"He was real charismatic," he said of the man who plans to put the Internet inside every television set in America. "If he were a salesman, I'd buy something from him," he added.
It's Ellison who might be buying a few pointers from Biswas in the near future.
After being one of 500 teenagers in the country who scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT last year, Biswas is set to attend Stanford University in the fall.
He sees grad school on the horizon, then a start-up computer company, perhaps, and maybe some R&D if that doesn't work out.
By that time, he should be eligible to vote.
"I don't set goals in terms of years," he said.
Last summer, Biswas worked on a 10-man team that tested the speed at which computers that use the Oracle database communicate with one another.
Biswas helped create a system that could test the speed of the communication.
"And I improved on that system I was testing," he said.
Biswas' interest in computer engineering started at age 8, when he began thumbing through his father's books on the topic.
"As a child you want to do what your parents are doing. It's the imitation thing," he said.
When he sent out five polished résumés last summer, he was hoping to land an internship. That's what Oracle offered him at first, then took him on as an employee.
"Cool," Biswas said his first thought was when he got the call from the human resources department. "Then I got kind of nervous because I didn't know much about the database they were using."
Books arrived via Federal Express shortly after to calm his nerves.
Biswas said the guys at work didn't take much notice of his age, and only gave praise for being involved in the field as a teen.
They also say he is a talented computer engineer.
"The only time where his age became apparent was when he had to rush out of work so his mom could pick him up," Peter Ogilvie, a fellow computer engineer at Oracle, said of Biswas, whom he referred to by his middle name, Zubin.
"Zubin's ability to absorb, comprehend and contribute would have been excellent if he were a recent college grad. But considering he was only a 15-year-old high school student, it was nothing short of amazing. While we were working together, I viewed Zubin as a colleague."
To pad his résumés , Biswas also designs and builds Web pages for the Fremont Union High School District, serves on the student executive board and writes for the school paper, The Epic.
Currently, he's waiting to hear from the folks at Westinghouse to see if he'll be the recipient of the annual $40,000 grand prize for scholarly achievement.
Each year the company receives thousands of papers, dissertations and proofs from scholars in all fields of work with new, exciting breakthrough theories. Applicants in years past have taken a stab at a cure for cancer. Biswas sent his 26-page paper titled, "Using the Normal Vector of a Three Dimensional Plane in a UNIX Environment."
In other words, he's made it more difficult for hackers to slip past computer passwords.
But Biswas still has some unfinished work closer to home.
He still has 30 hours to work off his learner's permit before he can get his driver license. With the senior ball just two weeks away, the man needs wheels.
"I hope I'll have it by then," he said.
TO THIS:
Sanjit Biswas, CEO and Co-Founder Meraki
Sanjit Biswas is responsible for Meraki’s strategic direction and day-to-day operations. He is currently on leave from the Ph.D. program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he co-led the research project that won several academic awards and later became the foundation of Meraki’s wireless mesh technology. Sanjit holds a B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford, and an S.M. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
