(Left to Right) Martin Gomez, Ian Palabasan, Payton Yao, Robin Yu, Farrell Wu, Maded Batara III, Jared Asuncion. Image National Olympiad in Informatics Philippines
Filipino students brought home a medal and three honorable mentions from one of the most prestigious computer science competitions in the world.
Robin Yu, competing as a Grade 12 student from Xavier School, won bronze at the recently concluded International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) held in Kazan, Russia, while Ian Palabasan, competing as a Grade 9 student from Rizal National Science High School, got an honorable mention.
Farrell Wu, competing as a Grade 11 student from MGC New Life Christian Academy, and Maded Batara III, competing as a Grade 10 student from the Philippine Science High School – Main Campus, also received honorable mentions from the same competition, which was held on Aug. 12-19. Wu and Batara’s feats are particularly impressive since both were first timers in the competition.
The four students were accompanied by team leader Kevin Atienza and deputy team leader Payton Yao, both prominent figures in the national competitive programming scene. The students were coached by Atienza, Yao and Jared Asuncion.
This is only the second time that a Philippine delegation was sent to represent the country in the International Olympiad in Informatics and the second time our delegates have reaped awards for our country. This year, a total of 324 participants from 88 countries registered for the Olympiad. Among the countries represented were China, Russia, Japan, Canada, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, the US, Australia and the Philippines.
The students were sponsored by local tech companies 24/7 International, Bitstop Networking Services, Custom Thread, D&L Industries, Inc., Pointwest Technologies Corp., Smart Communications and Thinking Machines Data Science. The organizing team would also like to thank Tonette Rivera for her help.
The Philippine delegation to the IOI were chosen from among the top students who joined the third annual National Olympiad in Informatics – Philippines (NOI.PH 2016). The organizing committee for the NOI.PH is composed mainly of UP graduates. who were once participants and winners of university-level programming contests. They volunteer each year to organize the NOI and IOI so that students can experience the joys of competitive programming at an earlier age. NOI.PH was started by Martin Gomez and Wilson Chua back in 2014, with similar goals.
For more information on NOI.PH, visit the website at https://noi.ph or go to the Facebook like page https://www.facebook.com/noi.philippines.