The top performers at the 15th Egyptian Olympiad in Informatics (EOI) were trained during February, in collaboration with the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) in Alexandria. The 15th EOI was held in September 2022, under the auspices and supervision of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and in cooperation with AASTMT, where the top performers have been selected to join the training bootcamp.
 
The training was delivered by an expert from the University of Waterloo, and was joined by 24 school students with advanced programming skills, passing several assessments and competitions, to compete in the final qualifying rounds that will be held in April. After the final qualifying rounds, the members of the team that will represent Egypt in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) will be selected. IOI will be held on August 28 to September 4, in Hungary.
 
IOI is the most prestigious computer science competition in the world for school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Bulgaria, with contestants from 25 countries. The international competition aims to get young generations interested in IT and provides an opportunity for the exchange of scientific and cultural experiences.
 
Held on an annual basis, IOI has countries compete through national teams composed of four students and two supervisors. Each team member is evaluated through five-hour assessments, during which they create and solve three tasks by writing algorithms as computer programs.
 
Egypt participated in IOI for the first time in 1998 and has been a permanent participant since then. So far, Egypt has bagged 27 medals in IOI: six silver and 21 bronze medals.
 
Egypt’s national team is formed by first assessing thousands of school students, the best of whom are selected to join MCIT-AASTMT 45-hour training in programming and systematic problem solving. The best 100 students are then selected to compete in EOI.