New Zealand Victory at Waterloo

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New Zealand Victory at Waterloo

New Zealand has been awarded three bronze medals at the 2010 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) which was held at the University of Waterloo in southern Ontario, Canada. Team members Logan Glasson (Burnside High School), Jamie McCloskey (Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti) and Boris Pfahringer (University of Waikato) each received a bronze medal at the closing ceremony on Saturday, 21 August. A strong performance was also shown by the fourth member of the team, Tony Sun (Christ’s College). The annual competition is the world’s premier high school programming competition and features over 300 of the world’s top computer science high school students, who are selected through national computing contests. 250,000 young people from over 80 countries compete each year to represent their country at the IOI,

The team was accompanied by Team Leader, Margot Phillipps director of the New Zealand Olympiad in Informatics and Deputy Team Leader, Robert Bowmaker. Two of this year’s team, McCloskey and Pfahringer also won bronze medals last year. In 2008, one new Zealander, Ronald Chan, got a silver medal. This is the first time that New Zealand is returning with three medals. Phillipps and Bowmaker were delighted with such a good result following a tough competition. “The students produced an impressive result, especially considering how young the team is.” Bowmaker commented.

Those involved in organising and hosting the competition have also been impressed by the caliber of the team. Canadian host, Elisha Epp, said, “I thoroughly enjoyed having the privilege to guide the New Zealand team during the IOI 2010 competition. It was a wonderful experience being able to share my culture with the team, as well as getting a better understanding of theirs. After getting to know the contestants I feel that this team is very intellectual and will have a bright future in whatever they pursue.” Another positive comment was made by Christopher Chen, an Australian who wrote one of the four problems for day one of the contest. He said “The 304 students participating here are the world's best and brightest. The New Zealand team's performance goes to show that the country is competitive on a world stage in computing.”

The contest was split over two days. Each competition session lasted 5 hours in which competitors demonstrated their skills in problem analysis, design of algorithms and data structures, programming and testing. The students described the contest as “intense, amazing and enjoyable.”

This is the fifth IOI Phillipps has attended as team leader. She is very proud of all of the members of the team this year. “They have been highly motivated and worked solidly towards achieving well this week. It is great to be bringing three medals back to New Zealand and I am sure our sponsors will be pleased to hear the good news.” Phillipps acknowledged the support received from Solnet, Datacom, Ace Training and Development, Netvalue, the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Universities of Canterbury and Auckland, and several anonymous donors. “The success of the Informatics team caps a wonderful year for all New Zealand participants in the Scientific Olympiads, with teams consistently achieving their best ever results"

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