Brent Zephyrine

Dif­fi­cult prob­lems must not be al­lowed to stand in the way of suc­cess and so one must be en­cour­aged to make "com­pli­cat­ed things" sim­ple. These were among some of the thoughts ex­pressed on Sat­ur­day by the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens Lar­ry Howai in his fea­ture ad­dress at the 25th Awards Cer­e­mo­ny of the T&T Math­e­mat­ics Olympiad. Al­lud­ing to the "well cho­sen" theme of ex­cel­lence: An At­tain­able Goal, Howai said he was was proud to be at the helm of one of the pre­mier or­gan­i­sa­tions spon­sor­ing the an­nu­al event, high­light­ing the im­por­tance of "rank­ing com­pet­i­tive­ly" be­yond the ranks of medi­oc­rity.

The func­tion, which was held in the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing's lec­ture the­atre at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, ho­n­oured more than 300 stu­dents, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 schools through­out T&T. Howai said from the list of awardees, a team was cho­sen to rep­re­sent T&T at the an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Math­e­mat­ics Olympiad (IMO) which is be­ing held this year in the Nether­lands.

They are: Prithvi Ra­makr­ish­nan, Ker­ry Singh, Bjorn Ram­roop, Sid­dhartha Ja­horie, Stephanie Hosang and Prasan­na Ra­makr­ish­nan.

In laud­ing the ef­forts and com­mit­ment of the T&T Math­e­mat­ics Olympiad com­mit­tee, Howai rem­i­nisced on the coun­try's suc­cess­ful stint at the com­pe­ti­tion over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly last year-where T&T was ranked sec­ond-and urged the team "to go one step fur­ther and bring the gold medal back home."