The national team that will represent Egypt in the 35th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2023) has been formed. IOI 2023 will be held from August 28 to September 4 in Szeged, Hungary.

The selection of the team members came as a result of the qualifying rounds organized by both the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) in April.

Members of the national team are the top four students that demonstrated excellent coding skills and who qualified for the Egyptian Olympiad in Informatics (EOI). They had previously made achievements and won medals and prizes in previous versions of IOI and other competitions.

The selection process involved several qualifying rounds where thousands of school students were assessed. The students then completed a 45-hour training activity in programming and systematic problem-solving. The training was carried out by MCIT and AASTMT and concluded with the selection of the top 100 students to compete in EOI.

IOI is a flagship software and systematic problem-solving methods competition targeting school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Bulgaria, with contestants from 25 countries. The global competition aims to get young generations interested in IT, and it provides an opportunity for exchanging scientific and cultural experiences. The competition is organized on an annual basis in one of the participating countries, with each represented by a national team composed of four students and two supervisors.

At IOI, contestants are assessed individually over two days through five-hour contests. They get to create and solve three programming tasks following systematic problem-solving methods and algorithms.

It is worth mentioning that Egypt participated in IOI for the first time in 1998 and has been a permanent contestant since then. So far, the country has scored six silver and 19 bronze medals. Egypt is to host the 36th IOI in Alexandria, marking the second time after 2008.

The Egyptian Olympiad in Informatics is the most prominent national competition in algorithms, programming, and systematic problem-solving for school students. It helped spot many young talents, who were later offered international scholarships or job offers at tech giants including Facebook, Google and Microsoft.