The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), in collaboration with the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), organized the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) Training Camp, on February 7-14, online.
The Camp was joined by 34 students, winners of the 13th Egyptian Olympiad in Informatics (EOI), who are recognized as the top school students in programming in Egypt. They went through several assessments and contests that qualified them to participate in the qualifier for selecting the members of the team representing Egypt in IOI 2021 in Singapore.
IOI is the flagship event for programming and systematic problem solving, targeting school students worldwide. The event aims to encourage students to focus on IT, and enable exchange of scientific and cultural experiences.
IOI is held annually in one of the participating countries, with each country represented by four students and two supervisors. Students are selected through an assessment where each has to use the computer to develop a solution based on programming and systematic problem solving (algorithms).
Egypt participated in IOI for the first time in 1998, and became a regular participant ever since. So far, Egypt has won six silver and 17 bronze medals.
The Egyptian team members are selected through a multistep process that starts with testing thousands of school students. Top students are then selected to join MCIT grant where they are trained on programming and systematic problem-solving. The 45 hour training concludes with selecting the top 100 students to participate in the EOI.
