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 of 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)

Can you tell what they are spelling?

Attending in-person for the first time in 4 years, the New Zealand delegation to IOI 2023 have arrived in Szeged, Hungary.

26/8: Auckland Airport. Team members and leaders prior to departure.

28/8: The team arrives in Budapest, standing over the Danube river.

29/8: The IOI practice contest.

The backpacks and Phoebe’s gold medal arrived in mid August. The team gathered again for a celebratory dinner on August 15, and Dr. Yu-Cheng Tu from Auckland University presented Phoebe with her gold medal.

When the “final whistle blew”, Phoebe was placed 3rd overall and gained one of the 17 gold medals awarded. New Zealand’s first international Informatics gold! Ena, Jasmine and Belle also performed creditably, placing 126, 141 and 143 respectively.

The girls competed in EGOI 2023, at AUT on Monday and Wednesday evenings, 7pm until midnight on July 17 and 19. New Zealand was one of 4 teams competing remotely, along with Tunisia, Ecuador and Bolivia. There were 52 countries represented with 189 competitors.

The scoreboard was visible to the leaders outside the contest room, and the proctors (Yan Li and Ivan Gaspardy) came out to check from time to time. Zalan Varga was deputy and gained some valuable insights for his role in Hungary in August.

Left to Right: Zalan Varga (Deputy Leader), Belle Yin, Ena Yin, Jasmine Liu, Phoebe Zhang, Margot Phillipps (Leader)

Check out the gallery for more photos.

The team to represent New Zealand at the European Girls Olympiad in Informatics 2023 has been chosen. All the girls are from Auckland. Jasmine is at ACG Parnell College, Belle and Ena attend St Cuthbert’s and Phoebe attends Rangitoto College.

The event was intended to be only on-site, but as this prohibited some teams from attending (costs), the event organisers generously decided to also allow on-line participation.

The team will sit the 2 contests at AUT on July 17 and July 19.

Jasmine Liu	Belle Yin	Ena Yin	Phoebe Zhang