Robin Yu brought home the first IOI medal last year and has been training in programming for the past few years. He spends most of his time training mostly through self-study. However, he never hesitates to ask for the help of the NOI.PH Scientific Committee on the rare occassion that he gets stuck. Apart from NOI.PH, he has placed in a lot of online competitions he joined at his own volition. He also joined Google Code Jam, where he placed third, just under Kevin and Payton, in one round among all the Filipino competitors. People say he is a creative thinker, probably because his height offers him a different perspective of the world.
Farrell Wu is named as one of the Ten Smartest Kids in the World by The Business Insider in 2013. He has garnered awards in a number of global competitions, including the prestigious International Math Olympiad (IOI) and the Australian Mathematics Competition where he aced all the questions. He was granted Filipino citizenship status thru House Bill 4073 early last year after he expressed desire to be a full-fledged Filipino. He brought a stuffed penguin during the IOI because he likes penguins. And perhaps stuffed toys too.
Maded Batara, coached by Edge Angeles, hails from Iligan City and has been training with us for the last two years. Starting Grade 1, he has placed in the MTAP division finals for six consecutive years. Aside from the NOI, he has also participated in and won other several technology related competitions such as the Ateneo Programming Open and the Grace IT Quiz Bee. Even though he is quite young, he is very organized and was responsible for coordinating a couple of team selfies during the IOI (as per the request of the organizing committee).
Ian Palabasan is a self-proclaimed addict in C++, a programming language. He has participated in several programming competitions held in Ateneo and FEU coincidentally with some his other competitors from the NOI. He is a fan of Undertale, a role-playing game about refusing to give up. This is why during the IOI, he was filled with determination.
Now that you know all about the Philippines’ representatives to the IOI 2016, let’s see what they have to say about their IOI experience.