The joint entrance examination for the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is one of the toughest exams across the globe. Over the years with several changing procedures, the aim has been to handpick students for India's premier institute. Despite the many criticisms against it, several students flock to ace the examination every year.

Back in 2009, when results for the exam were released, four of the top ten rankers found another thing common besides cracking the competitive exam. All of them were gold medalists at the International Physics Olympiad that year. The details about their current whereabouts were shared by Debarghya (Deedy) Das, an Indian-origin tech influencer in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Now, almost fifteen years later, here's what they're doing today.

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Nitin Jain, the first rank-holder, currently works as a software engineer at Google. He completed his degree from IIT Delhi. Following this, he went on to intern at Meta, which was then known as Facebook. After a brief stint with Twitter in the US Jain joined Google before finally moving back to his homeland and continue working for the tech giant.

Shubham Tulsiani was the second rank-holder in the exam that year. He currently works as an assistant professor at the Robotic Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Before joining CMU, he worked as a research scientist at Facebook AI Research. 

The third rank-holder, Sivakanth Gopi, graduated from IIT Bombay and went on to earn a PhD from Princeton University. Gopi has been working with Microsoft for over three years and is currently the principal researcher at the big tech firm.

Priyank Parikh stood sixth on the list. After graduating from IIT Bombay, he worked as a software engineer at Google. He is now associated with Google-parent Alphabet's self-driving car unit, Waymo.

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