Computer science talents clear gold medals
Two IT Olympiads took place at the end of June: the Central European and the Western European. Switzerland entered a team in both competitions and won three gold medals.
From June 23 to 29, the 31st Central European Olympiad in Informatics (CEOI) was held in Brno, Czech Republic, and from June 29 to 30, the new Western European Olympiad in Informatics (WEOI) was held in London for the second time. The winners of the Swiss Informatics Olympiad took part in both the Central European and the Western European Informatics Olympiad.
Elias Bauer, Yaël Arn and Jerry Schupp won gold, with the first two scoring full points. Ferdinand Ornskov and Mark Neumann secured bronze medals. The WEOI participants worked on their algorithms for five hours on Saturday. Beside that, there was also a little time for presentations and games. Charlotte Knierim, who supervised and accompanied the participants, says she is "very happy with the Swiss performance." Knierim is a doctoral student in Professor Angelika Steger's group at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich.
In addition to the competition days, the programme in the Czech Republic also included activities such as museum visits, boat trips and bouldering. There was no medal, but computer science apprentice Kimi Löffel was satisfied with his result, the best score in the team: "I had actually expected much more difficult tasks, which I can't solve anyway."
Congratulations to all participants for this great achievement and a big thank you to the supporters and organisers.
For 20 years, the Science Olympiad has been encouraging young people, awakening scientific talent and creativity and demonstrating how exciting science can be. Ten Olympiads are held every year, comprising workshops, camps, exams and competitions for over 8,000 talented young people in the fields of biology, chemistry, geography, computer science, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, physics, robotics and economics.