IMShiyam Thavandiran

Shiyam Thavandiran was born in Toronto and began playing chess at seven. He finished eighth at the World Under-Ten Championship and became Canadian junior champion at twelve. At the University of Western Ontario, he played alongside Aman Hambleton, Raja Panjwani and Justin McDonald. His individual victory at the 2012 Canadian University Championship helped the team win the overall title. FIDE recorded his International Master title in 2017. He won the Canadian Championship in 2024 without losing a game, defeating Bator Sambuev, Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux, Panjwani and Nikolay Noritsyn along the way. At that year's Olympiad, he scored victories over grandmasters Štěpán Žilka and Trần Tuấn Minh. He played in the 2025 World Cup, where Daniil Yuffa eliminated him in the first round. Outside chess, he has worked as a machine-learning engineer at the Royal Bank of Canada.