13 August 2019 – Team Singapore won one gold, one silver and one bronze medal at the recent International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2019 that was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 4 to 11 August.
The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual international informatics competition for high school students. It is one of the five international science Olympiads and one of the most prestigious computer science competitions in the world. This year, a total of 327 contestants from 87 countries attempted to solve six computing problems over two days of competition.
Singapore was represented by Leong Eu-Shaun (Raffles Institution, JC1), Jeffrey Lee Chun Hean (NUS High School, JC2), Benson Lin Zhan Li (Hwa Chong Institution, JC1), and Daniel Choo Zhenghao (Raffles Institution, Secondary 4). Leong, Lee and Lin won a gold, a silver and a bronze medal respectively.
NUS Computing faculty members and students have coached Singapore students for IOI, the National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI), and the Asia-Pacific Informatics Olympiad (APIO) since 1992. Leader for Team Singapore, Dr. Steven Halim, said, “This is Singapore’s largest contingent to date, with 16 people as we prepare to host IOI in 2020. This is also the first time Singapore has won a gold medal in two consecutive years from two different contestants. So, kudos to main coach Feng Jiahai and other Singapore IOI and NOI alumni who helped train this team.” Dr. Halim runs NUS Computing’s competitive programming programme.
The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual international informatics competition for high school students from around the world, and is one of the five international science olympiads. The primary goal of the IOI is to stimulate interest in informatics (computer science) and information technology. Each participating country is represented by a team of up to four contestants. Students compete individually, solving sets of informatics problems during two competition days, and participate in cultural and recreational events on the remaining days.
On each of the two contest days, contestants are typically given three tasks and five hours to programme working solutions to solve these tasks. The tasks are algorithmic, requiring contestants to demonstrate not only basic IT skills such as programming and testing, but also in-depth knowledge of designing algorithms, data structures and information theory.
Every year, the four Singapore students with the best scores in NOI and APIO are selected to represent Singapore at IOI. Singapore students have been participating in IOI since 1992. IOI2020 will be held in Singapore, organised by NUS Computing and supported by the Ministry of Education and the Singapore Tourism Board.
