ITMO: Russian Team Triumphs at International Olympiad in Informatics 2022
The final round of the 34th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2022) was held in Yogyakarta (Indonesia) on August 15. As reported by the press office of the Russian Ministry of Education, the Russian team won three gold and one silver medals.
The gold medals were awarded to Alexander Babin from School No. 149 in Krasnoyarsk, Danil Klishch from the Physics and Mathematics Lyceum No. 31 in Chelyabinsk, and Vsevolod Nagibin from the educational center and gymnasium No. 6 Gornostay in Novosibirsk, whereas the silver one went to Fedor Romachov from the Advanced Educational Scientific Center of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
“Our team excelled at IOI 2022. All team members got medals, which says a lot about their knowledge level, and their achievements are surely not only the result of many years of work but also a great indicator of our education system’s efficacy,” states Sergey Kravtsov, Russian Minister of Education.
The team trained over a year, starting from November 2021. Out of over 80 candidates who participated in programming camps, four participants made it to the competition. The participants performed the olympiad’s tasks remotely from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The deputy head of the team is Alexey Maleev, the Institute’s Director for the Development of IT.
The team is led by Andrey Stankevich, an associate professor at ITMO’s Information Technologies and Programming Faculty, who has been coaching current and prospective students for over 20 years and is best known for training the university’s team that became the world’s only seven-time ICPC champion (read our interview with the coach ).
The contest welcomed teams from 90 countries. Four gold medals went to school students from Japan and China, and the US team received three golds and one silver, just like the Russian team.
The International Olympiad in Informatics is an annual international scientific competition for school students initiated by UNESCO. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgaria, and the second – in Minsk. Russia hosted the event for the first time in 2016 (Kazan). In 2021, the contest had teams from 80 countries, and the took home one silver and three gold medals, as well.
The contest brings together students who demonstrate outstanding achievements in computer science, including algorithms, data structures, programming, and problem analysis. Although only teams of up to four participants can enter the contest, each of them has to compete individually at the event.