IT students qualify for Athens olympiad

Four top ranking contestants in the National Informatics Competition - Karl Cassar, Ranier Bonnici, Atanas Atanasov and Stephen Fenech - will be competing with international counterparts in the International Olympiad of Informatics in Athens from September 11 - 18.

The local competition was held at the ICT Institute of the Malta College for Science and Technology and the participants had to solve a number of informatics problems within a fixed time-frame under competition conditions by applying their programming skills to their creative thinking.

The International Olympiad of Informatics has been organised annually since 1989 to stimulate interest in computing science and information technology, bringing together exceptionally talented students from different countries to share both scientific and cultural experiences.

Prior to the international competition, the selected team will be receiving special training organised by the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta.

The training programme will focus on giving contestants the experience necessary to perform well by increasing their capability to solve various problems from past competitions.

This is the second time that the ministry responsible for IT organised this competition, providing four Maltese students the opportunity to compete against other students from across the world.

Air Malta is sponsoring the flights to Athens.