Sunday 8th April - After three day of competitive programming in DCU’s School of Computing at the final stage of the All-Ireland Programming Olympiad (AIPO), the best young programmers in Ireland have been selected to attend the prestigious 30th International Olympiad in Informatics in Tsukuba, Japan in September.

 

John Ryan (19yrs - St.Joseph's College, Borrisoleigh, Thurles), Kieran Horgan (18yrs - Davis College, Mallow, Co. Cork), Oisin O’Duibhir (18yrs - Scoil Mhuire Agus Íde, Newcastle West, Limerick) and newcomer Caolan Fleming (17yrs - Kings Hospital, Lucan, Co. Dublin) claimed the top four places on the AIPO scoreboard. Eight students from the National Finals in February were invited to this Fidelity Investments sponsored selection bootcamp on DCU campus for a mix of competitive programming training and IOI qualification contests.

 

John, Kieran and Oisin were all members of the 2017 Irish team that travelled to Iran for the 29th IOI and their experience showed on Day 1 of the competition. These seasoned programmers quickly took pole positions on the leaderboard. Caolan Fleming from Portlaoise missed out on Team Ireland last year by only 34 points and he was determined to make it into Team Ireland this year. He dutifully achieved this by putting a sizeable gap of 101 points from his nearest competitor on the first day and maintained that separation over the three days. Congratulations to all them.

 

As a break from the competitive programming, the AIPO team visited a Japanese restaurant in Dublin to whet their appetites for the culinary delights that awaited the Irish Team in September. With a first taste of sushi  and miso soup for these students, it was quite an experience! Saturday evening was the annual AIPO 4-a-side kick about in Hampstead park beside DCU. With Munster versus non Muster competition was almost as fierce as the earlier contests in the computing labs.

 

There will be more training for these students in the summer to fine-tune their algorithmic coding skills before Team Ireland departs for the IOI in Japan (1st - 8th September) https://ioi2018.jp/ . With the School of Computing’s Data Science undergraduate degree a perfect fit for these students, we would hope to see some them on DCU campus in the near future.

 

The All-Ireland Programming Olympiad (AIPO) is kindly sponsored by Fidelity Investments Ireland and DCU.

 

A big congratulations to all the students attending the 2018 Selection Camp. They were: