Honours, Awards

Academic

I was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship in order to read for a DPhil at Oxford. During my last year, I was also funded by my supervisor's ERC grant, naasp

I received the following departamental prizes and awards during my undergraduate Degree at Oxford; they are also listed here .

• Microsoft Prize: For best Computer Science project 2021 (Part C) (joint winner)
• Hoare Prize: For best overall performance in Computer Science 2020 (Part A+B)
• bcs Prize in Computer Science: For the best performance in Computer Science papers 2018 (Prelims)

I received the following college scholarships and exhibitions during both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Oxford:

• Trinity College Doctoral Graduation Prize, 2025: For academic excellence.
• Trinity College Graduate Scholarship, 2024: For outstanding work in 2023/2024.
• Trinity College Academic Prize, 2022: For achievement in 2021/2022.
• University College Finalist's Scholarship, 2021: For a Distinction in 2020/2021.
• University College Scholarship, 2020: For excellent exam results in 2019/2020.
• University College Scholarship, 2019: For excellent exam results in 2018/2019.
• University College Exhibition, 2018: For excellent exam results in 2017/2018.

Competitive programming

Contest	Year	Location	Prize	Team
ioi	2017	Tehran 🇮🇷	Gold 🥇	RO 🇷🇴
ceoi	2017	Ljubljana 🇸🇮	Gold 🥇	RO 🇷🇴
InfO(1)Cup	2017	Online	Gold 🥇	RO 🇷🇴
boi	2016	Nikosia 🇨🇾	Silver 🥈	RO 🇷🇴
acm icpc wf	2018	Beijing 🇨🇳	Participation	Tractor_Specialists
nwerc	2017	Bath 🇬🇧	Gold 🥇	Tractor_Specialists
hashcode wf	2020	Online	Participation	Rust Team
hashcode wf	2019	Dublin 🇮🇪	Participation	Steaklovers
hashcode wf	2018	Dublin 🇮🇪	Participation	Tractor_Specialists
rnoi	2017	Brașov 🇷🇴	Bronze 🥉	Bihor
rnoi	2016	Craiova 🇷🇴	Gold (3rd place) 🥇	Bihor
rnoi	2015	Târgoviște 🇷🇴	Silver 🥈	Bihor
rnoi	2014	Pitești 🇷🇴	Bronze 🥉	Bihor

For more details see this and this .

Other activities

Service

On the program committee for the Theory of Computing track of synasc '24 .

Reviewed for:

• Conferences:
  • sofsem '24
  • stoc '24
  • csl '25
  • stacs '25
  • ipco '25
  • mfcs '25
• Journals:
  • sidma (x2)
  • dam
  • optim lett
  • tcs

Project participations

Participated on

• Power of Algorithms in Discrete Optimisation ( powalgdo )
• New Approaches to Approximability of Satisfiable Problems ( naasp )

Teaching

Helped with teaching Efficient algorithms at Marburg 2025-2026

Taught classes for Algorithms of Bioinformatics at Marburg 2025-2026

Taught classes for Combinatorial Optimization at Oxford in 2022-2023, and in 2024-2025.

Taught tutorials for Imperative programming 1 & 2 and Imperative programming 3 at University College, Oxford in 2022.

Helped with undergraduate admission interviews for University College in 2021 and 2022, and for Exeter College in 2024.

Research seminars, etc.

Conference talks:

• wifs '20
• icalp '22
• lics '23
• lics '24
• approx '24
• icalp '25
• focs '25

Workshop/seminar talks:

• bctcs 2022
• Dagstuhl Seminar 22201
• lse phd Seminar on Combinatorics, Games and Optimisation, 04/11/2022
• acid seminar, 25/04/2023
• Romanian algorithm days 2023 (Talk recording here)
• csp World Congress 2023
• Birmingham tcs seminar, 11/10/2024
• Dagstuhl Seminar 25211
• puddle seminar (Oxford) 29/05/2025
• Mathematics of Constraint Satisfaction Problems , Durham 2026
• Algebra-Geometrie-Kombinatorik Seminar , Dresden 07/05/2026

Other event participations:

• epit 2023: Le Kaléidoscope de la Complexité
• csp World Congress 2022, 2024
• Czech Summer School on Discrete Mathematics, 2024
• lms Computer Science Colloquium 2024
• Workshop 'Combinatorics, Algorithms, and Geometry'

Competitive programming

Deputy team leader for Romania at:

• ejoi 2020, Georgia
• ceoi 2021, Croatia
• ioi 2023, Hungary

Scientific committee executive chairman for InfO(1)Cup : 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026

President of the Scientific Committee for the Computer Science section of the ScienceOn contest, 2021.

Scientific committee member for:

• ceoi 2025 (Cluj Napoca)
• boi : 2018 (Timișoara), 2022 (Bucharest)
• jboi : 2022 (Dorohoi) , 2023 (Strumica)
• InfO(1)Cup : 2019
• rmi : 2020 , 2021 2022 2023 , 2024 , 2025 .
• ejoi 2021
• paio 2025
• Romanian National Olympiad in Informatics (several years)

Author or coauthor of over 100 competitive programming tasks. (For a non-exhaustive list, see here .)