South Africa has won two bronze medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). The medals were won by Ulrik de Muelenaere from Gauteng and Yaseen Mowzer from the Western Cape.
The IOI is an annual competition in which the brightest young computer programmers from across the world compete as individuals against each other. This year, the contest was held in Kazan, Russia, and was attended by the best young programmers from 86 countries.
The South African team consisted of four members - all finalists in the 2015 Standard Bank Programming Olympiad who qualified for the international team after additional training.
De Muelenaere was in Grade 12 at Waterkloof High in Pretoria when he won the South African Programming Olympiad. He was also a member of the South African team to go to IOI 2015 and won a bronze medal there.
Mowzer is in Grade 12 at Fairbairn College in the Western Cape. He also won a bronze medal at IOI 2015 in Kazakhstan and similarly at the International Mathematics Olympiad earlier this year. He is eligible to compete in the IOI in 2017 again.
The other team member, Bronson Rudner, is in Grade 12 at SACS in the Western Cape and can also compete again next year. IOI 2016 inspired him: "It has motivated me to practise hard for IOI 2017."
Laurens Weyn was in Grade 12 at Abbotts College, Century City when he was selected to join the IOI team.
The team leaders were Robert Spencer and Robin Visser, both past Standard Bank Programming Olympiad winners and international participants.
"The problems were quite difficult this year. The contest itself was very tight and exciting, with Ulrich de Muelenaere making a submission at the last moment that boosted his score into bronze status," says Spencer.
"The IOI is extremely tough," says Peter Waker, manager of the Standard Bank Programming Olympiad.
"In many countries, teams are in special schools where they receive dedicated training to prepare them for the IOI. All our team members come from ordinary schools yet do extremely well each year. To give you some idea: our team member who was lowest in the South African team still beat the entire teams from Nigeria, Luxembourg and Sri Lanka."
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