Quazi Rushnan had quite an adventurous childhood, moving from one country to the next due to her father’s job in the Foreign Ministry. She did her primary schooling in the British School of Warsaw in Poland, after which she subsequently moved to the Middle East, where she enrolled in the British School of Kuwait. Upon moving to Bangladesh, Rushnan joined Bangladesh International Tutorial but chose to prepare for her O’ levels privately. The entire process of planning out when and how to study taught her how to become independent. She started looking into sites such as Khan Academy and MIT OpenCourseWare, and realized that the way her future was going to pan out solely relied on her.

Rushnan’s middle school Physics teacher was the one who opened her eyes and pushed her towards pursuing engineering. Even though she had originally wanted to study Physics, she decided against it, thinking that acquiring an education in Physics would only narrow down her career options in Bangladesh. After her A’ levels, Rushnan, decided to join Dhaka University, majoring in Electrical Engineering – a choice that left her slightly depressed as she watched her friends leave to pursue degrees in foreign colleges. The culture of education – a culture that prioritized grades over overall learning – suffocated Rushnan. She finally reached her limit when someone at her university made a sexist remark about her when she failed to answer a question in class correctly.

“When one of the male students got an answer wrong, they were put to blame. When I got an answer wrong, my gender was put to blame,” Rushnan continued.

That particular incident struck a chord within Rushnan. She vowed to herself that she would never again allow anyone to make light of her. With renewed determination, she took a good look around her and assessed her resources – neither did she have access to the best of labs, nor did she have the privilege of having world-class noble laureate teachers. All she had was a newfound sense of purpose and that is exactly what she decided to use to her advantage.

It seemed that luck was in Rushnan’s favor. Right at that point in time, Dhaka University finished constructing its very own fabrication lab (Fab Lab DU) and started paying students BDT 5000 to 10000 in funds to start their desired projects. Despite knowing that she would have to compete with a lot of her seniors who were more knowledgeable and better prepared compared to her, Rushnan registered and pitched her idea to the University in hopes of receiving the fund and starting a project. To her surprise, her faculties appreciated her idea very much and awarded her funding of BDT 5000 – it wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to get Rushnan started.

Rushnan’s idea impressed her faculties so much that they allowed her to represent Bangladesh in a satellite engineering training program. So far, Rushnan has been a part of three of its training camps, the first that took place in Beijing, the second in Turkey and finally, the third in Shanghai. Her experiences of getting to know different people from different countries, all of whom were brought together by their interest in Physics, helped to enrich her knowledge and Rushnan started growing more and more interested in Space and Nanotechnology.

According to Rushnan, her teachers are her biggest inspirations. They are the reason behind all her success – not just her University faculties, but her middle school teachers as well. Rushnan feels as if teachers don’t receive the respect they ought to. If you think about it, they are the real change-makers of society who change it for the better by sharing their knowledge and educating young people.

“I don’t know where I would have been without my teachers,” Rushnan stated.

While still in University, Rushnan collaborated with the University of Southhampton on a project on Optics and Solar Cells. The fact that Rushnan did not have the fabrication resources in her University to work on a project such as this, and that the research group at Southampton required a particular skill set of modeling those solar cells (the knowledge that Rushnan, however, was equipped with), worked in favor of both the parties, with each party using the resources that were available to them to work on the project.

Just recently, Rushnan got invited to the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate meetings (dedicated to physics), where she gave an interview on her project of black silicon solar cells and how it makes solar energy more efficient. Rushnan’s plans include expanding her research on black silicon solar cells to incorporate it into a working device. She has also had a direct PhD offer come in from the University of Rochester which she is very excited about because it means that she can now do the things that she previously could not due to lack of facility.

The Prestige wishes Rushnan every luck in her future endeavors.