Irish students compete in Programming Olympics in Russia

Team Ireland had a great performance at the Olympics of High-School Programming in Russia.

The delegation was chosen from the top young programmers at the All-Ireland Programming Olympiad (AIPO) National Finals in February after a series of programming bootcamps at Dublin City University (DCU). Gary Conway, a lecturer in the DCU School of Computing, led the delegation alongside Ximo Planells.

Team Ireland included Eoin Davey from Summerhill College, Sligo, Teofil Camarasu from Dundalk Grammar School, Co. Louth, John Ryan from St. Joseph's College, Thurles, Co. Tipperary and Kieran Horgan from Davis College, Mallow, Co. Cork. All of the team scored points during the Olympiad but Teofil Camarasu came within a hair’s breath of bringing home Ireland’s second Bronze in three years with 288 points.

During the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the students must solve six algorithmic problems over two days of competition, with points awarded for how quickly their coded solution runs against large data inputs.

Gary Conway said: "To reach an IOI is a tremendous achievement for these young men and something that will always stand out on their CV. The skills required to reach an IOI is exactly the type of engineering skills so sought after in the software industry today: computational thinking and generation of quality code under pressure. They have a bright future ahead of them!"