Sahibzada Sanwar Azam Sunny (; Bengali: সানওয়ার আজম সানি, born 17 December 1989) is a Bangladeshi-born American artist, environmental activist, inventor and entrepreneur. He became fluent in multiple languages and is one of the youngest artists to have a solo exhibition at the National Art Gallery with work in permanent collection at the Liberation War Museum. He finished four years of American high school in eight months with honours and was a college senior by the age of eighteen, teaching university courses in engineering at the age of 21.
Early life and family
His father was a senior member of the Singranatore family and a military commander of the national Army, United Nations forces and the Border Guard, while his mother, Kamrun Nahar of the Munshibari family of Comilla was an artist and scientist, a student of Iajuddin Ahmed, the thirteenth president of Bangladesh. Both parents were born in erstwhile East Pakistan. He grew up in various places around the country. He has an older sister, named Shahzia Sarwar, an architect. The House of Singra and Natore (Singranatore Zamindari) was a formerly ruling family who were hereditary lords (Zamindars) in the northwestern region of Rajshahi in erstwhile East Bengal in the area of present-day Singra, Bangladesh. In 1950, the State Acquisition Act was adopted by the erstwhile democratic government of East Pakistan, abolishing the rights of the feudal ruling families. The Singranatore family, who served as vassals to the Maharajas of Natore and Dighapatia, also produced many influential members and politicians.
Background and education In 2005, as a youth ambassador to the United States, he was supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State. He started high school at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy after completing eighth grade, to study International Baccalaureate and was a senior aged fifteen. His first ever paid job at the age of 16 was to do a MATLAB programming project for Miftahur Rahman at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at North South University. A child prodigy, he could fluently read, write or speak six languages by the age of eight and by 2006 he completed the four-year American high school program in less than nine months, as a member of the Honor Roll, United States National Honor Society and winning awards with the Science Olympiad. Then he was offered a merit scholarship by the University of Kansas School of Engineering when he was only sixteen years old. He was a final year university student (college senior) studying engineering by the age of eighteen. At Kansas, he was an active brother of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity (PIKE) initiated through the Beta Gamma chapter. He also holds a Master of Public Administration degree (2013) and a PhD in entrepreneurship and innovation (2018) from the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was a graduate researcher under Jered Carr at the L.P. Cookingham Institute of Urban Affairs where Nicholas Peroff was his graduate advisor. He graduated with Pi Alpha Alpha, Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi honours.
Activities His family was involved in the energy and infrastructure sectors for decades, particularly oil. His paternal uncle M. M. Rahmat Ullah, an East Pakistani bureaucrat from the 1960s and politician who unsuccessfully contested the seat of Natore's third constituency as a member of parliament to the National Assembly in the Eighth National Parliamentary Elections of 2001, was also the chief engineer of the Public Works Department and later the chairman of the Capital Development Authority of the government of Bangladesh under General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, the military dictator and later president of Bangladesh. The President and he were however charged in the Janata Tower Case in the early 1990s by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. Another paternal uncle, Akther Hussain of Natore, an East Pakistan regional officer of Pakistan State Oil was made one of the six executives of the Jamuna Oil Company, Bangladesh's National oil company under Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation by the government of Bangladesh. A maternal uncle, Major Raihanul Abedin was the PSC director of the Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation. Working on behalf of the government of Bangladesh, he oversaw all energy production treaties with various foreign energy companies, including Enron Corporation, Niko Resources, and Tullow Oil. Later, during the military-supported government of Bangladesh in 2007 he was appointed the managing director of Water Supply and Sewerage System. He was forced to resign on charges of nepotism once the ruling party took power in the 2009 national elections when the newly formed government sued top officials of the old regime. The Major was credited with being the first to introduce cooking gas instead of harmful fuels for automotive fuel, to decrease carbon emission in early 2001 under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
Clean transportation
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
