Wednesday 5th September - 18 year old Kieran Horgan from Mallow, Co. Cork clinched a Bronze medal at this year’s prestigious 30th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Tsukuba, Japan. After winning the AIPO national title in DCU in February, Kieran was awarded the Bronze medal after two days of competitive programming among 335 high school students from around the world. In field that is dominated by the USA, China, Russia and former soviet states, this is quite an achievement!

Sponsored by Fidelity Investments, Team Ireland included John Ryan (19yr) from St.Joseph's College, Borrisoleigh, Thurles, Oisin O’Duibhir (18yr) from Scoil Mhuire Agus Íde, Newcastle West, Limerick, Caolan Fleming (17yr) from Leinster College, Newbridge, Kildare, Kieran Horgan and Delegation Leaders, Gary Conway and Ximo Planells.

Kieran had an excellent first day of the contest, scoring 180 points out of a possible 300,  to put him into a solid silver medal position. However, the second day of the contest was much tougher, with Kieran only scoring 24 out of 300 points. Thankfully, most students found points difficult to come by on the second day, but he did slip down into the Bronze category managing to scoring enough to keep himself above the cut off. He gave his delegation leaders (and his family no doubt!) quite a fright on the morning of the second competition day, when he was one of the first to score 19 points on the third problem, propelling himself into the Gold range!