17-year-old author has 2 college degrees, flies planes, works at NASA but too young to drive a car alone

Moshe Kai Cavalin, pictured, has two college degrees, flies airplanes but they said he's too young to drive a car alone and vote, according to AP.

The 17-year-old author from San Gabriel, California who helps NASA develop surveillance technology for airplanes and drones, graduated from community college at age 11. Four years later, he had a bachelor's in math from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Cavalin has postponed the online master's programs in cyber security he started already through the Boston area's Brandeis University.

He just published his second book and plans to have his airplane pilot's license by the year's end. At his family's home near Los Angeles, he has a trove of trophies from martial arts tournaments.

"My case isn't that special. It's just a combination of parenting and motivation and inspiration," he says after a recent shift at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. "I tend to not compare myself that often to other people. I just try to do the best I can."

His parents say he was always a quick study. At 4 months, he pointed to a jet in the sky and said the Chinese word for airplane, his first word. Cavalin hit the limits of his home schooling after studying trigonometry at age 7. Then his mom started driving him to community college.

After he finishes his master's from Brandeis, Cavalin hopes to get a master's in business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, he wants to start his own cybersecurity company.

Cavalin's mother from Taiwan and a father from Brazil.

For more on Cavalin's story visit AP