Maya Chouikrat is a coach and organizer for the Algerian mathematics and informatics Olympiad programs — and is in her fifth year of medical studies. She and I first met in 2023, when she completed the first season of GTF Coaches training. In those early interactions, she quickly stood out as a leader who is committed to lifting up the people around her.
She has been instrumental in building the foundation for informatics competitions in Africa. This would be a tremendous accomplishment for a senior teacher, but Maya began when she was barely out of high school and starting university full-time.
Fostering community
Maya first participated in mathematics Olympiads in Algeria in early 2020, standing out as the best performer in Blida and among the top performers nationally. In other years, this would have led to participation at the International Math Olympiad (IMO). But due to municipal COVID quarantine restrictions in her area, Maya was not called. The following year, her last of eligibility, she participated remotely at the 2021 IMO for Algeria, where as a student, she also helped organize logistics for the local online test.
After transitioning from high school to medical school, Maya started to focus on improving local Olympiad training and building the program to go beyond a set of written tests.
“I want to do something for my country and build the math community here,” she told me in a recent Zoom interview.
She began reaching out to the Ministry of National Education in 2022 and obtained permission to hold math Olympiad camps. These efforts benefitted from a successful performance at that summer’s IMO–a bronze medal and three honorable mentions, after two years with none. The training started with Discord servers for communication and a website to help students prepare. After months of work, her first camp brought in 40 students. Most of them had already participated in competitions that year.
As the community and learning environment grew stronger, IMO results improved. The team brought home two bronze medals and four honorable mentions in 2023, Algeria’s first-ever gold in 2024, and three more medals in 2025.
As Maya explained, “These results show that math Olympiads are something important that we need to take care of. We’ve built a community, and now we have a camp every school break, and the students are happy about it.”
An informatics Olympiad for Algeria...
As Maya was mentoring talented math students, she noticed many of them had a passion for computer science as well. So in early 2024, she decided to create an informatics competition in Algeria, with the additional goal of fielding a team at the biggest competition in the field: the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).
“Okay, this is my chance,” she remembers thinking. “If we succeed in participating and get a medal, we are going to convince the Ministry again, and build the community, and Olympiads in informatics will happen in Algeria.” To meet the criteria to participate in the IOI, she and her collaborators needed to organize a wide-reaching national Olympiad in informatics.
Maya again contacted students who qualified for the second round of the 2024 national Olympiad in mathematics and invited them to train online. She also raised money, got permission from the Education Ministry, and brought in the coaches who ran the training. The first Algerian Olympiad in Informatics took place online in Spring 2024, and Team Algeria was off to the races!
By June, they were competing internationally, at the European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI). In September, the team set out for the IOI. The competition was held that year in nearby Egypt, and not only did Algeria compete, they medaled – a remarkable achievement for their first time competing with the world’s best aspiring computer scientists. Although they did not medal in 2025, they are undaunted and training hard for this year’s competition in Uzbekistan.
“Always the first step is the hardest step,” Maya shares, “and then the community starts growing up, and people will hear about you and will like to help.”
… the region, and all of Africa
After helping Algeria reach the world stage in informatics, she soon grew restless again. Eager to build on North Africa’s momentum – Egypt and Morocco had also medaled at IOI, and Tunisia earned an Honorable Mention – Maya and her collaborators set their sights on creating a regional competition.
“It's actually easy to do things online,” she reasoned. “Why not make a North African Olympiad in Informatics?” By spring of 2025, NAOI had come to life. Drawing on their past experience and global network from IOI and EGOI, the organizers had created a high-quality competition for 59 skilled students from nine countries, including four countries outside North Africa – an impressive start.
At the same time, the idea of a Pan-African Informatics Olympiad (PAIO) had taken root among African country team leaders, including Maya, on WhatsApp. Seeing the success of NAOI catalyzed and gave a defining template for PAIO, which launched in September 2025 as an online competition.
“When I saw that the North African Informatics Olympiad was actually happening, I was like, why not turn it into a Pan-African Olympiad?”
Maya was a key PAIO organizer and serves on its international committee, alongside Hirwa Arnold and Obed Nsanzimfura of Rwanda, fellow GTF Coaches alumni. The program has trained 330 people from 47 countries across five seasons, taking on a different Olympiad math topic each time, and teaching them pedagogy and how to stand up or strengthen Olympiad organizations in their countries as well.
Completely free for participants, admission to GTF Coaches is competitive, with roughly five applicants per slot. The program encourages collaboration across a truly international community of educators, coaches, teachers, and administrators from around the world – as the PAIO story shows.
“You just need to have an idea, believe in it, and have enough courage to contact people to help you, and to actually do it,” she says.
Daily life in medicine
Maya's passion lies in mathematics, informatics, and inspiring students, yet her daily life centers on medical school. “Olympiads are super chaotic for me, but medicine is my safe place,” she explains.
Are the two related? “Math helps with medicine,” she muses. “It gives me confidence and makes it easier to notice patterns, because everything is connected.”
“Medicine is very special. It gives you power, and you understand what’s happening around you. Being at the hospital makes you forget the whole world, all the problems.”
Maya’s other escape is sports – she bikes, runs, and practices martial arts. And she plans to combine the two, seeking a career in sports medicine.
While her interests may be varied, the thread that links them is community – Maya builds it wherever she goes. This year, Maya is continuing her work to support highly talented math and computer science students being invited as a coordinator at the European Girls’ Math Olympiad in France, and by helping organize the European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics in Italy.
As she says to coaches developing their country's Olympiad programs across Africa and the Middle East, start with community. Your group will be small at first, but it will develop.
“You need to be patient, because you won't see results in one month or one year. When you grow a community, you secure results for the next five to ten years,” she shares.
“Don’t think about future problems, solve the ones you’re facing now. Even calling things ‘problems’ is a problem itself. Take things easy, start, and be patient.”
