A former student of Bahrain's Sacred Heart School has made international headlines after becoming one of the youngest students accepted to a top Canadian university.

Fourteen-year-old Alexandre D'Souza will start a double major in biological and chemical engineering at McMaster University, Hamilton in September.

The Gulf Daily News, our sister publication, had reported about Alexandre's extraordinary intellect in 2008 when the then nine-year-old achieved the highest marks worldwide in English and mathematics in the Global Achieve International Assessments for Improved Learning exams for that year.

His family lived in Bahrain for 25 years, but moved in 2011 to Toronto, Canada, where he is currently finishing year 12 at St Marcellinus Secondary School. "I am absolutely proud to have been blessed with such wonderful children," his father Alfredo D'Souza told the GDN.

"He is starting university very young, but we know that he's going to be able to manage both academically and socially," he noted.

"When he was just two years old he learned Arabic numbers by going around the compound and looking at the licence plates on cars," he recalled.

Alexandre also has a passion for music, having played piano since he was five.

McMaster engineering acting dean Art Heidebrecht told the Toronto Star that he could not recall the admission of someone that young in the almost 50 yeras he has been at the university.-TradeArabia News Service