Hadi Maarouf Farah

Hadi Maarouf Farah is a 16-year-old Lebanese-American student studying in Doha, aspiring to become a computer science engineering student at a top school in the US. He is especially passionate about AI and Robotics and aspires to change the field of consumer technology for the better.

 

Growing up, Hadi has always been a curious person, with a burning passion to learn. In school, he has been somewhat of an overachiever, consistently scoring excellent grades. He participated in many science fairs and was praised for completing self-study opt-out courses, which allowed him to shadow teach and advise younger kids at his school mainly in English, Math, and Science courses. Later on, he

started working on student government projects that helped him enhance his skills and enjoy the sensation of helping others. He has received many certificates of excellence and appreciation from his school.

Outside of school, he excelled at both academic and non-academic projects. On the non-academic side, he has  invested his time into piano and karate lessons, with over 10 years of experience. He has performed at piano concerts and even entered a few karate championships before finally receiving his black belt in 2023. Chess has also been a hobby of his, and as an avid chess-player, he has received training from IM Lawrence Trent, which enabled him to participate in several tournaments.

 

At the age of 10, he was accepted as a member of the National Society of Gifted and

Talented NSGT in the USA; and in 2017, he attended SIG (Summer Program for the Gifted) at UCLA as a commuter. He enrolled in genetics, arithmetic, electricity, magnetism, and acoustics related coursework. It was great to experience campus life at UCLA where he made friends with whom he still keeps in touch. Eventually, he returned to SIG via an online course on Moodle.

 

In pursuit of his extracurricular passions, he took a John Hopkins spatial reasoning test and was accepted for their CTY program for talent search. Sadly, he never ended up attending any of their programs due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Making use of his time during quarantine, he completed two programming courses, “Introduction to Computer Science and Programing using Python” with MITx and “Introduction to Python: Fundamentals” with Microsoft. He was awarded certificates for both. To top it all off, at the age of 13, he started two Harvard programming courses, one in game development and the other in C# programming, both of which he enjoyed as they were challenging and filled up his free time.

Currently, he is nearing his last year of high school, knowing the greater hurdles he has to overcome in pursuing his dreams. Well-focused, enthusiastic, and gifted with an unwavering sense ofpurpose, he hopes to successfully fulfill his ambitious dreams at university and beyond.