I'm Mateo: a robotics engineering student at NTU Singapore and three-time International Mathematical Olympiad contestant from Colombia, now working on developing AI systems that do what we want them to.
BogotáBogotáBogotáRio de JaneiroOsloTokyoCoimbraBathAucklandSunshine CoastSingaporeSingaporeSingaporeShenzhenHong KongChennaiSpainSpainFranceFranceGreeceGreeceItalyItalyUnited StatesUnited StatesDominican RepublicDominican Republic
Colombia
The Start
I was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. I lived quite the normal life until secondary school, when I first participated in the National Math Olympiad to skip biology class... and ranked first in the country(!?)
BogotáBogotá
2022 - 2023 | Iberoamerican
Bogotá, then Rio de Janeiro
I developed an interest for solving math problems and I somehow made it into my country's team for the Iberoamerican Math Olympiad. I fell short of the bronze, but I kept practising and made up for it the year after, in Brazil.
BogotáRio de Janeiro
2022 - 2024 | IMO
International Mathematical Olympiad
I slowly climbed my way up the rankings and made the team to three consecutive International Math Olympiads for Colombia: Oslo 2022, Tokyo 2023, and Bath 2024. Not an exceptional contestant (nothing -> bronze -> honourable mention), but I had a fun run :).
OsloTokyoCoimbraBath
2025 | IMO
Auckland and the Sunshine Coast
By 2025, the role changed: I came back to the IMO as an exam invigilator and staff member in Australia, after a year of teaching Geometry at Colombia's national camps (and even at the IMO training camp in New Zealand).
AucklandSunshine Coast
2025
New Beginnings
Leaving my math background behind, I chose to start an undergraduate degree in Robotics at NTU's School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, being part of the first batch of the programme.
Since I started my studies in Singapore, crazy opportunities have come up one after another. To list a few: NTU took me to a robotics trip in Shenzhen (China), Jane Street took me to FTTP in Hong Kong, and VIT took me to their TechnoFest in Chennai (India).
I've been to 8 countries in one year!
ShenzhenHong KongChennai
Bogotá - Singapore
Nearly as far apart as it gets
Despite the fact that Bogotá and Singapore sit 173.6° apart on the globe, I consider myself at home now. I couldn't feel any luckier :).
BogotáRio de JaneiroOsloTokyoCoimbraBathAucklandSunshine CoastSingaporeShenzhenHong KongChennaiSpainSpainFranceFranceGreeceGreeceItalyItalyUnited StatesUnited StatesDominican RepublicDominican Republic
Now
Aligned Intelligent Systems
Robotics at NTU, alignment research at TARA, Autonomous Driving at Huawei.
Now, figuring out: how do we build intelligent systems that actually do what we want them to?
Selected work
Jun 2026
Steering language models: manifold and concept steering
Interpretability research on how concepts live inside language models, and techniques to steer them.
An RL-learned branching heuristic for exact, #P-hard chromatic polynomials. 19% smaller search trees than the standard heuristic, verified against a brute-force oracle with zero mismatches across all 328 instances tested.
