User:Nydauron
| Nydauron | |
|---|---|
| General Information | |
| Years in SO | 6 |
| Past Team(s) | Conant High School |
| State | IL |
| Division | D |
| Scioly.org Information | |
| Forum profile | Nydauron |
| Staff Position | Administrator |
| Exalted | 3x
|
| Medals | |
| Total medals | 29
|
| Competitor Info | |
| Competitions attended | 21 |
| Events competed in | 16 |
| Volunteering | |
| Years volunteered | 6 |
| Number of competitions | 15 |
Nydauron is an Administrator on Scioly.org, an alum of Science Olympiad, and is an active member of the Division D community. He has been a member of the Mead Junior High School Science Olympiad Team, competing in Division B for both years and also competed later on the Conant High School Science Olympiad Team for four years in Division C since the start of the school year in 2015. After high school, his participation in Science Olympiad waned from competitor to volunteer as he assisted and supervised multiple tournaments, from local invitationals/regionals to nationals, within the next few years. He graduated from the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign in with a Bachelors in Computer Science in the spring of 2023. On April 21, 2025, he became an Administrator for Scioly.org, where he helped maintain server infrastructure and fought off bad-behaving AI scrapers.
 | Nydauron has been exalted 3 times. |
 CONANT | Nydauron attended Conant. |
ILLINI
 |
Nydauron attended UIUC. |
| IL | Nydauron competed in Illinois. |
Div C
2015-2016
This was my 3rd year in Science Olympiad, 1st in Division C, and it felt completely new to me. I somehow got stuck with It's About Time which to me seemed like one the hardest events I’ve had. Yet, I still managed to place at our regional! It was our first time our school went to state and I was excited to compete in Hovercraft. Though our build was a complete mess, and I had no idea we would still be able to place!
Results
| Event | Regionals (JV) | State (A) |
|---|---|---|
| Hovercraft (TRIAL) | - | 3rd |
| It's About Time | 4th | - |
| 4th | Nydauron has received a 4th place medal in It's About Time at Harper Regional. |
| Bronze | Nydauron has received a Bronze medal in Hovercraft at Illinois State @ UIUC. |
2016-2017
This year, I was put under Electric Vehicle. I didn’t even expect to place with my build since it was simply a Ward’s kit that the team purchased. Funnily enough, at regionals, my build outperformed our Varsity build! We went to state again for the second time. This time, I competed in Geocaching and easily got 1st. (We joked my cross country coach would be proud!)
Results
| Event | Regionals (JV) | State (A) |
|---|---|---|
| Electric Vehicle | 3rd | - |
| Geocaching (TRIAL) | - | 1st |
| Bronze | Nydauron has received a Bronze medal in Electric Vehicle at Harper Regional. |
| Gold | Nydauron has received a Gold medal in Geocaching at Illinois State @ UIUC. |
2017-2018
This year, I finally earned a Varsity spot and decided to go try hard. Mousetrap Vehicle was one of the events I spent the most time on: making small refinements, doing several runs, even straight up building a new version! Later on in the season, our team assigned me to do Hovercraft. So during the month of Feburary, I gave my best attempt at trying to build one. Fortunately, I was able to build a functioning hovercraft for regionals. Before that, no one on the team was able to build a “working” hovercraft. Both my mousetrap vehicle and hovercraft got 1st at regionals. Carrying the team to state, I placed 2nd overall for Mousetrap Vehicle and 3rd overall for Hovercraft.
Results
| Event | Regionals (V) | State (AA) |
|---|---|---|
| Hovercraft | 1st | 3rd |
| Mousetrap Vehicle | 1st | 2nd |
| Thermodynamics | 5th | 12th |
| Gold | Nydauron has received a Gold medal in Hovercraft at Harper Regional. |
| Gold | Nydauron has received a Gold medal in Mousetrap Vehicle at Harper Regional. |
| 5th | Nydauron has received a 5th place medal in Thermodynamics at Harper Regional. |
| Bronze | Nydauron has received a Bronze medal in Hovercraft at Illinois State @ UIUC. |
| Silver | Nydauron has received a Silver medal in Mousetrap Vehicle at Illinois State @ UIUC. |
2018-2019
This was my final season of SciOly. My final "Horrah!" you could say. I felt really confident going into this year due to my upset wins last season. Unfortunately, this will lead to me falling flat on my face as college applications whelmed me. As a result, my builds were rushed and ended up slightly worse than the competition. Expecting to bubble, I was bewildered that I medaled in 2 of my events this year at state.
During this year as well, I took inititive to push the team to rise up the ranks. Based on the data, this year's events REALLY syergized with our team, and I felt we were about top 15, possibly top 10 if we tried hard enough. At regionals, out team got 3rd overall along with a nice trophy! In the end, we ended up at 12th at state which was 9 up from the previous year. I was happy to end my Div C career with having help push the team to a higher level of competition.
Results
| Event | Regionals (V) | State (AA) |
|---|---|---|
| Circuit Lab | 8th* | 16th |
| Mousetrap Vehicle | 3rd** | 5th |
| Sounds of Music | 3rd | 5th |
| Thermodynamics | -*** | 21st |
*Because sig figs apparently exist in physics, too...
**Our coaches messed up the result entries for MTV, so we ended getting a silver medal instead of a bronze medal. XD
***When coach doesn't put you in Thermo, and she already signed up self-schedule stuff already, and it just so happened Thermo and MTV were at the same time... facepalm
| Bronze | Nydauron has received a Bronze medal in Mousetrap Vehicle at Harper Regional. |
| Bronze | Nydauron has received a Bronze medal in Sounds of Music at Harper Regional. |
| 5th | Nydauron has received a 5th place medal in Mousetrap Vehicle at Illinois State @ UIUC. |
| 5th | Nydauron has received a 5th place medal in Sounds of Music at Illinois State @ UIUC. |
Div D
As someone who hates goodbyes, I couldn't leave SciOly. It had become a part of me that I couldn't leave behind. It had become something that defined me. Good thing Div D exists! lol
2019-2020
2019-2020 is my first year as part of Div D. Here is a list of the competitions that I have volunteered or will volunteer at:
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conant | 12/07/19 | Gravity Vehicle | Volunteer/ES Assistant |
| UChicago Div C | 01/11/20 | Ping Pong Parachute | Event Supervisor |
| Parkland Regional | 03/07/20 | Machines | Event Co-Supervisor (Device/Build Portion) |
*The IL state tournament was canceled at ISO's discretion due to COVID-19 and UIUC's new response as of 03/11/20 stating activities above 50 people are prohibited.
2020-2021
Ah yes: the season where COVID basically ruined everything. While not having in-person competitions was a big letdown that was expected, I am glad there was at least something to fill the void with Mini SO and even SSO. This year, I didn't want to do too much work regarding SciOly given that academics were already a burden with being online. That being said, here are the list of competitions I have volunteered or helped out so far this season:
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| BEARSO | 10/10/2020 | N/A | Scilympiad Website Designer |
| SOLVI | 12/19/2020 | Circuit Lab | Event Co-Supervisor & Grader |
| UChicago Div C | 01/16/21 | Circuit Lab, Detector Building, Machines | Grader |
| UChicago Div B | 01/23/21 | Circuit Lab | Grader |
2021-2022
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| SONI | 01/08/22 | It's About Time | Event Assistant (Timer) |
| SOLVI | 01/15/22 | It's About Time/WiFi Lab | Grader/Proctor |
| Nationals | 05/14/22 | It's About Time | Event Assistant (Timer) |
2022-2023
I took a break from volunteering and focused most of my time and energy on HackIllinois.
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois State | 04/22/23 | Scrambler | Volunteer (Timer) |
2023-2024
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| UChicago Div C | 02/03/25 | Codebusters | Co-Event Supervisor |
| Harper College Regional | 03/09/24 | Robot Tour | Co-Event Supervisor |
| Illinois State | 04/20/24 | Robot Tour | Co-Event Supervisor |
2024-2025
I abandoned IL for CA for a job. Another loss for IL, unlucky really.
I also had to cancel my volunteering for Harper because of it, but thankfully, they found someone to run Robot Tour. Bernard clearly approved of me abandoning them:
... you chose a job over volunteeringWhat type of human are you ...
Dude will do anything for money
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cali North State | 04/05/25 | Robot Tour | Co-Event Supervisor |
2025-2026
TBA
| Competition | Date | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milpitas Invitational | 11/08/25 | Scrambler | Head Event Supervisor |
| GullSO | 12/13/25 | Robot Tour | I had personal complications 3 weeks prior that prevented me being present :( |
Event Experience
These are all the events I have background in.
Division B
Division C
- Circuit Lab
- Electric Vehicle
- Game On (one hour of nightmares... and that is coming from a CS student!)
- Geocaching
- Hovercraft
- It's About Time
- Mousetrap Vehicle
- Sounds of Music
- Thermodynamics
- Optics
- Wind Power
- WIDI
Division D
- Circuit Lab (MiniSO)
- Codebusters
- Detector Building (MiniSO)
- Gravity Vehicle
- It's About Time (Satellite)
- Machines
- Ping Pong Parachute
- Robot Tour
- Scrambler
- WiFi Lab (MiniSO)
Favorite Events I've Competed In
Of all the events I've competed in Div B and Div C, here are my top 5 favorite events.
What Have I Done With Scioly.org?
Here is a list of things that I was actively involved in since the beginning of my tenure:
| When | Task |
|---|---|
| 2025Q1 | Handled the AI bot scraper crisis by installing Anubis If you ask how we got S/O by the code owner of Anubis, your guess is good as mine. |
| 2025Q2 | Focused on good security posture, upgrading EoL software when needed |
| 2025Q2 | Established a resilient backup solution to protect decades-worth of data |
| 2025Q2 | Took down the site because firewall ALLOW rules were not in place |
| 2025Q3 | Upgraded the Wiki to the latest LTS (1.43) and enabled a bunch of other extensions that came with it |
| 2025Q3 | Started work on WikiProject Dark Mode, a plan to fulfill support for dark mode across the wiki |
| 2025Q3 | Performed some housekeeping and implemented security hardening practices on the SSSS page |
| 2025Q3 | Fixed BBcodes on the forums to work on the latest version of phpBB |
| 2025Q3 | Streamlined our confirmation process on the Discord with their onboarding survey, dramatically simplifying for the end user |
| 2025Q3 | Launched a new version of Pi-Bot, with structured IaC to help facilitate redeployments of future versions |
Beyond SciOly
High School Years
While SciOly was and still is a good chunk of my life, I still manage to get other things done. Back at Conant and Mead, I was part of the XC and T&F team. I love distance running. Every time trial was like a step of motivation. It in fact pushed me enough to break 5 minutes in the mile! Among other things, I was also played the violin in my High School Symphony Orchestra for 4 years, making it into District 7 ILMEA 3 years, and once into All-State ILMEA. During the winter, I would compete with the chess team. If you've noticed so far, strategy, mind-games, and competition are all my thing. ;)
University
During my uni years, it was pretty chill in comparison to high school. I cut back a lot on extra activities to focus on coursework and to help destress easier. While still helping with SciOly during the beginning year, after COVID, I fell out of favor of it since most competitions were no in-person, and having helped out with some virtual MiniSO/satellite competitions like SOLVI, UChicago, and SONI, I lost some taste for volunteering. After returning back to campus my junior year, I joined HackIlliois staff as an API developer, and I ended up leading the API team the next year. I also picked up playing poker through a student organization. But, all in all, things are pretty mellow.
After Graduation
After Uni, I got a bit into gardening. In my last fall semester, I took a vegetable gardening class where we went over gardening principles, different types of vegetables, and how to maintain and harvest them. During the class we got to grow own on choice of cool-seasoned vegetables as well! For the 2024 warm season, I chose to do green bell peppers (which turned out pretty well) and roma tomatoes (not as well, but I believe that was because the soil was given too much nitrogen). For the cool season, I had bok choi and got an amazing harvest. Before the first frost came in, the pepper plant was in a very healthy condition, so I decided to overwinter it and bring it inside to prevent it freezing to death from the cold Chicago winters (temps that season dipped to the mid -10s°F but it was happy being in a room around 55°F). That pepper plant survived the overwintering pruning (since pepper plants are rather resilient), and is producing a lot of pepper this season that the rest of my family is enjoying.
I also got into archery. I was introduced to it when I took a quick summer program in 2023. Having now moved to California, I thought it would be an opportune time to expand out that branch more. I shoot barebow recurve, but I am not opposed to trying more Olympic recurve disciplines once I am comfortable at shooting at indoor distances (20 yds/18 m).
Oh yeah, I am also a trash Nova Master in CS2 that deletes heads and is a menace with a Sawed-Off.