The fifth European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics was held two weeks ago in Bonn, Germany and this marks the second time New Zealand has attended in person. The team had a bit of a rough start, even before leaving New Zealand, with both of our domestic flights to Auckland getting cancelled. After that, we had few issues and made it to Bonn as planned. To the surprise of all the German locals, our Deutsche Bahn train service even ended up being on time!

Once in Bonn, we had some time to visit before the EGOI started, so we went around the city centre visiting places such as the Haribo Shop (Bonn is the birthplace of Haribo!) and the Bonner Münster. Then, the events started — the practice contest, a tour of the University of Bonn, the opening ceremony, activites organised by Deutsche Telekom, and finally, but most importantly, the contest days!

All of our contestants performed well in both contest days, where they were up against contestants from 59 different countries. My congratulations go out to the entire team Juno came 60th overall, with 361 points, earning them a Bronze (and almost Silver) medal! This is our second ever medal at the EGOI! Then: Ava placed 176th with 109 points; Vicky placed 189th with 80 points; and Georgia placed 197th with 73 points.

After the contests, all the teams were taken up the Drachenfels where they got to see the ruins of Burg Drachenfels and the current Schloss Drachenburg castle, followed by a cruise down the Rhine.

A special mention should also go out to Iván Gáspárdy, who authored one of the EGOI tasks.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible for the New Zealand team, from the German organisers to the helpers back in NZ!

The delegation at the opening ceremony. Left to right: Briar, Anatol, Juno, Georgia, Vicky, Ava

Juno receiving their medal

The team infront of the Bonn Electoral Palace, which is depicted in the logo of EGOI 2025

The team in the Bonner Münster Cloister

Schloss Drachenburg

Juno with the Dutch mascot Owl

Later this year, Victor Coen (Mount Albert Grammar School), Boliang (Eric) Liu (Macleans College), Tymon Mieszkowski (Long Bay College), and Jiahong (Kai) Yu (Pinehurst School) will be travelling to Bolivia where they will be representing New Zealand at the 37th International Olympiad in Informatics.

The IOI will be held in Sucre, Bolivia from the 27th of July to the 3rd of August. The team will be led by Nicholas Grace and Ravid Aharon.

The team has been training since January. They have just recently returned from Sydney where they attended the Australian Informatics April Camp run by AMT.

The team at the airport

Taken before leaving for the Australian Informatics April Camp

Team

Victor Coen	Boliang (Eric) Liu	Tymon Mieszkowski	Jiahong (Kai) Yu

This year, New Zealand’s European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics team will be: Georgia Gill (Wellington Girls’ College), Ava Heath Williams (Burnside High School), Juno Rainey (Papanui High School) and Vicky Zhao (Elim Christian College Mt Albert). They will be accompanied by Anatol Coen and Briar Tait.

The 2025 edition of the European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics will be held in Bonn, Germany between the 14th and the 20th of July.

Team

Georgia Gill	Ava Heath Williams	Juno Rainey	Vicky Zhao

The NZOI 2025 Summer Camp has just concluded (January 4th to 12th) in Christchurch.

The students and staff arrived from all over New Zealand on flights from Invercargill to Auckland, with a sizeable majority from Auckland.

There were 30 students invited, with 20 students divided between Algorithms and Experienced (found via the NZIC rounds) and 10 students in the Intro to C++ group (found via PC4G). One student moved into the Algorithms group from the Intro group and one student went home early.

The staff at camp, both lecturing and tutoring, were Nicholas, Joseph, Janindu, Anatol, Zalan, Arshia, Bertil and Thomas who are all NZOI ex-students. Suzanne supervised at the hostel and in the Intro room.

We are grateful again to Prof. Tim Bell and Dr. Richard Lobb, both from CSSE Canterbury University, for lecturing the Algorithms group.

The weather in Christchurch didn’t play ball so the planned excursion to Jellie park for a swim was cancelled and instead the students went in small groups, with a tutor, on the bus into Christchurch to see the sights. Evening activities included an icebreaker game organized by Janindu, a quiz night organized by Joseph, and a Codebreaker contest (many tutors were involved!). Our sponsor Jane Street organised an online Estimathon as a contest, in groups of 6.

The Intro group sat one contest that was suited to their experience. The other students sat two contests during camp (4 hours long each, and involving tutors working long into the night pre-contest!).

These contest results were used to select a group of 9 (“the squad”) who will be invigilated in their home towns to sit the upcoming AIIO and FARIO contests. All results will be used towards the selection of the New Zealand team for IOI 2025 currently scheduled to be held in Sucre, Bolivia.

After the second contest the activity was again a contest, this time to write the best C++ program to play the game “Snake”.

Despite Christchurch weather not being particularly kind, camp was a great success. Students formed new friendships and the many talented pianists were showcased in the downtimes in the hostel!

As this is my last year organising camp, it’s appropriate to recognise not only the amazing hard work and dedication of this year’s staff, but also the scores of previous staff since January 2007, almost wholly ex-students, who give freely of their time and energy over the years to enable New Zealand students to have the amazing opportunity to represent the country in a prestigious international event. My sincere thanks to all of them.

Margot

If you’re a student who didn’t go to camp, but who thinks this sounds fun, then participate in NZIC! It’s a free online competition, run throughout the year, with some problems approachable to newcomers and some hard ones to work towards. NZIC participants will be contacted towards the end of the year about selection for January Camp 2026.

New Zealand was invited in late July to join the first International AI Olympiad, to be hosted by Saudi Arabia. Two students from the IOI team, GuanHan and Victor, expressed interest, and were taken to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia at the conclusion of IOI. They had very little preparation time.

The contest consisted of one five hour written test on theory that had been covered in a series of webinars released in the months prior to IAIO. The 2nd contest day was practical (coding) using the Zindi platform to predict forest fires in the MENA region based on monthly data of weather, vegetation etc. variables.

There were 90 students from 25 countries present, many of whom had also been at IOI. Both New Zealand students excelled on the 2nd day, with Victor leading the public scoreboard. This was based on running the model on 30% of the test data. Final scores were based on the other 70%.

Victor secured a gold medal, (NZ’s first in either Informatics or AI) and GuanHan a bronze medal.

The team with their medals:

The team with their guide:

The practice contest:

The 36th International Olympiad in Informatics has wrapped up, with all the contestants gathering in Cairo infront of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of Giza for a grandiose closing ceremony.

This year saw Guanhan receive New Zealand’s first silver medal at the IOI in 16 years! Rather poetically, last time NZ earned a silver medal was at IOI 2008, also held in Egypt!

Out of 354 official contestants, Guanhan earned 308.21 points, placing 70th. Victor earned 235.47 points, placing 155th and earning a bronze medal. Jesse earned 143.83 points and placed 265th and Peter earned 101.31 points, placing 292nd. We would like to congratulate the entire team on these incredible results!

Between the two contest days the team went for an excursion at Montazah Beach for a little relaxation and before the closing ceremony they got to visit the Egyptian Grand Museum in Cairo.

The New Zealand delegation at the closing ceremony, with their guide Rewan:

Guanhan and Victor with their medals:

The Egyptian Grand Museum:

The team has arrived in the Arab Academy For Science, Technology & Maritime Transport in Alexandria and has enjoyed a relaxing few days to adjust to the local time zone. After a chance to experience the contest environment in the practice contest, the team headed to Bibliotheca of Alexandria to attend the official ceremony. We wish them the best of luck for Contest 1 tomorrow.

Team in action

Victor Coen	GuanHan Li	Jesse Zhang	Peter (Xiaotian) Zhou

I had an incredible time at EGOI and learning how powerful and useful this skill of programming is has made me certain this is what I want to do with my future. I feel incredibly inspired to continue training, learning and pursuing programming. I have always loved technology, and this event only increased that love.

One of the best parts of attending this event was getting to meet other people who are passionate about programming. Being surrounded by people who are all interested in something I’m interested in was incredible.

I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. I feel so incredibly grateful to have been able to do this, and I’m so excited to keep training to hopefully compete again next year. And, to prepare for my future in this field, which looks incredibly bright.

The New Zealand IOI Delegation has just left Auckland and is heading to Alexandria, Egypt to participate in the 36th International Olympiad in Informatics! Before leaving, they took part in five pre-departure contests and debriefs as last-minute preparation for the IOI.

The team at Auckland Airport:

Part of the team got together on some days of the pre-departure training to do the contests and debriefs together:

The first ever New Zealand in-person EGOI delegation have landed in the Netherlands and have made their way to Veldhoven! They recently attended the opening ceremony and sat the practice contest. We wish them the best of luck as they begin the first contest tomorrow morning! (This evening NZ Time)

The full team at EGOI:

Team members at the practice contest: