Thien Nguyen took his first course - calculus - at the University of Washington when only eight years old, and graduated at age 15 with a degree in bioengineering. He then entered the university’s highly selective MD/PhD program that combines medical practice with scientific research. After received his MD and PhD degrees from UW, Nguyen completed a residency in Neurology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. As of 2025, Dr. Thien Nguyen is a still a practicing neurologist.

Here, Thien Nguyen sits in his UW lab, surrounded by scientific equipment. He credits his maturity and persistence to the harrowing experiences his family suffered as Vietnamese refugees escaping by boat in 1979.

Caption information source: “He’s way ahead of the class: 17-year-old among chosen few in UW grad program”, by Jane Hadley, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 3, 1991, pages A1, A11.