Shiyam Thavandiran

[1] He placed 4th in the World U10 Championships and became the youngest Canadian junior champion at the age of 12.

[2] In January 2012, he won the Canadian University Championship, which helped his University of Western Ontario team (Aman Hambleton, Raja Panjwani, and Justin McDonald) to the championship.

[3] He won the Canadian Chess Championship in April 2024, during which he went undefeated and achieved wins against other strong players such as Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux, Raja Panjwani, Nikolay Noritsyn, and grandmaster Bator Sambuev.

[4] In September 2024, he represented the country at the 45th Chess Olympiad, where he defeated the higher-rated grandmasters Štěpán Žilka and Trần Tuấn Minh in the third and last rounds, respectively.

[5] Off the chessboard, he works as a machine learning engineer at RBC.