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:

The selection process has concluded and Julia Escoto (Macleans College), Juno Rainey (Papanui High School), Hannah Withers (St Andrew’s College) and Ellie Zhou (St Andrew’s College) have been selected to represent New Zealand at the 2024 European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI) in Veldhoven, The Netherlands.

Margot Phillips, Phoebe Zhang and Jasmine Liu will be accompanying them as team leader, deputy leader and guest respectively.

The EGOI was first held online in 2021 and in person in 2022 with the goal of providing a platform for young women and non-binary people to enjoy and deepen their interest in computer science. After having participated remotely in EGOI 2021 and 2023, this will be the first year where New Zealand attends in person!

Team

Julia Escoto	Juno Rainey	Hannah Withers	Ellie Zhou

Later this year, Victor Coen (Mount Albert Grammar School), GuanHan Li (Murrays Bay Intermediate School), Jesse Zhang (Macleans College), and Peter (Xiaotian) Zhou (Auckland Grammar School) will be representing New Zealand at the International Olympiad in Informatics. The reserve is Vedang Patil (Newlands College).

The IOI will be held in Alexandria, Egypt from the 1st to the 8th of September. The team will be led by Nicholas Grace and Bruce Chen. Suzanne Scott will be accompanying them as manager.

The team has already started training. Last week they virtually attended the Australian Informatics April Camp run by AMT.

Team

Victor Coen	GuanHan Li	Jesse Zhang	Peter (Xiaotian) Zhou

The NZOI January Camp for 2024 has just ended and all the students have made their way back from camp!

This year we continued the smaller camp format as it had worked really well last year. In total, 28 students attended - flying in from all around New Zealand. Twenty two students were in the Algorithms and Experienced groups and six girls from the PC4G program were in the Intro to C++ group.

Phoebe and Jasmine tutored the Intro to C++ group throughout the week. The camp teaches C++ as it is now the only language available at the IOI (since Java was removed in 2021!). During that time, the Algorithms group received lectures from UC lecturers Prof. Tim Bell (now a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit), Dr. Richard Lobb and Dr Neil Leslie as well as some of the past camp attendees who came back as tutors. A wide range of topics was covered - from graph theory to segment trees. The Experienced group explored more advanced topics and tasks such as centroid decomposition and the infamous “Dwarfs” problem. They were taught by Dr. Rajko Nenadov from the University of Auckland as well as the tutors.

Outside of the lab, the students went on an excursion to the McDuffs Scottish Mini Golf, participated in a quiz night organized by Joseph, had a Codebreaker contest and took part in an Estimathon organised by our sponsor Jane Street.

As part of our selection process, the students sat two contests during camp. These contests were three and four hours long respectively and were set by the tutors. These contest results, as well as results from the upcoming AIIO and FARIO contests will be used in the selection of the New Zealand team for IOI 2024 in Alexandria, Egypt. After the second contest the students took part in a fun activity where they were tasked with writing a C++ program that could best play the game “Snake”.

Overall, this camp went really well. A special thanks goes to everyone who made it possible - the students, the parents, the lecturers, the other tutors (Jasmine, Phoebe, Jonathon, Iván, Zalan, Nicholas, Joseph, Janindu, and Rajko) and especially to Margot and Suzanne who organised and ran the camp.

Anatol

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 2025.

The 2023 New Zealand team kept scoreboard watchers entertained for 5 hours on the second competition night, as they took turns getting marks that pushed them into bronze medal contention, and then falling back as they were leap frogged by other contestants. It was the most exciting and nail-biting viewing since NZ first competed (back in 2006!). There were 21 places between our entire team (out of over 350 contestants), with Anatol, GuanHan and Phoebe gaining bronze medals and Jonathon gaining an Honorable Mention. In an IOI an HM means a score that would have got a medal on one of the two days. We are enormously proud of the entire team.

Bottom photo from left: Deputy Team Leader Zalan Varga, Jonathon Sun, IOI President Ben Burton, GuanHan Li, Phoebe Yufei Zhang, and Anatol Coen. (Absent: Team Leader Suzanne Scott)