- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
A YOUNG contestant on Channel 4’s quiz show Child Genius has impressed audience with her mathematical skills.
Nishi Uggalle, 12, from Manchester has an IQ higher than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking and she is one of 15 children who remain the contest to find Britain’s brightest eight to 12-year-old.
She impressed both judges and viewers when she displayed her ability to work out tricky sums in seconds.
The self-proclaimed “geek” said she entered the competition to prove that “girls can be good at maths too.”
“Most people probably think that maths is a boy’s subject specifically but I definitely think that’s not true,” she said. “A big reason that I’d like to win is I think a lot of the time I think it seems to be boys that dominate these kind of things and I’d like to show that girls are just as good and girls can win too.”
Sharing her experience filming for the show, Uggalle was quoted in a local newspaper as saying it was a “new challenge” to compete against the best in the country.
She said: “I think Child Genius has definitely been the largest-scale and most challenging competition I have ever taken part in.
“It’s completely different to any school experience; I attend a grammar school so all the students are incredibly talented, but to be competing against the best in the country was a new challenge.
“Overall, I loved the experience, and made great friends with the other competitors. I think it was also interesting for my mum and dad to meet some parents of other gifted children.”
In 2016, Uggalle became one of the youngest people in the country to score the highest possible mark of 162 in Mensa.
She lives with her parents, Neelanga and Shiromi, who moved to Manchester from Sri Lanka in 2001.
