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International Olympiad in Informatics, Australia

Neither Richard Tynan nor Maciej Goszczycki have left school yet but they are off to represent Ireland in the International Programming competition, the IOI 2013, in Brisbane Australia. 

Last February, both students aged 17 and 16 came through the All Ireland Programming Olympiad (AIPO) finals and were among six students chosen to be brought to DCU for a training camp to decide the ultimate winners to represent Ireland.

The AIPO pitches the best young programmers from around the country to compete against each other, with the preliminary round undertaken at home or school, a second round held in the School of the Computing, DCU and the last round over a three day training camp in DCU.

Gary Conway, head of the AIPO explained ‘The three day problem solving training camp exposes the students to the International standard in the finals and the camp is run in the same structure as it will in Australia when they represent Ireland.  Both the questions and the structure of the training camp are run as per the main international competition in Australia, so the students get an accurate feel of what it will be like when they represent Ireland in the finals’. 

He also went on to say ‘Thanks to The School of Computing, DCU who have always supported this event and in particular, Fidelity Investments who sponsored and funded the entire event.  It now means these students are in a position to represent Team Ireland abroad, and without the support of Fidelity, we could not be able to run the event the way it should be.  Fidelity has been involved from day one and worked with us during the training camp, which was a success all round’. 

Travis Carpico, is the President of Fidelity Ireland and was present during the training camp.  He said ‘Fidelity is delighted to be involved in this competition. We are keen to support and foster talent of this nature at the early stages and it’s important to us, to to be involved as much as we can.  We would like to congratulate all the students who worked hard, their motivation and talent is to be commended and in particular well done to Richard and Maciej who will do us proud at the Internationals’.

Richard and Maciej will spend almost two weeks in Australia at the 25th International Olympiad in Informatics, and we wish them the very best of luck.