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Olympic success in programming for Irish teenager

19-year-old Tipperary native, Richard Tynan, clinched a Bronze Medal at the prestigious International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Taiwan last week. The IOI is the pinnacle of computer programming at high school level; over 311 students from 82 countries attended this year’s event to solve six highly complex algorithmic problems over two days. Many of the students that attended are self-taught in programming techniques that are generally only introduced to third year computer science university students.

 

With the support of Fidelity Investments and DCU, the top eight teenagers from the national All-Ireland Programming Olympiad (AIPO) were invited to a three day training camp in DCU’s School of Computing. The students were tutored in advanced competitive programming techniques enabling them to decipher and code a solution to International Olympiad problems. The top four students from this group - Richard Tynan, 18 year-old Conor Griffin from Limerick, Áron Hoffman a 17 year-old from Dublin, and fellow Dublin programmer Daniel Mulcahy, also 17 years of age, were selected to represent Ireland on the trip of a lifetime to Taipei.

 

Gary Conway, who led the Irish delegation, said "This is Ireland’s first medal in five years and a great achievement for Richard. To put it in perspective, the UK, Spain and Hungary also only received one bronze medal, so when you compare these populations, Ireland is definitely punching above its weight."

 

After clinching his medal, Richard said "I'm delighted to receive an IOI medal. This is my third and final year attending the IOI and I was determined to win a medal. I'm going to miss coming to the IOI now that I'm starting college. It's been a wonderful experience visiting Taiwan and making new friends from around the world". Richard has been invited to read Computer Science at Cambridge in the United Kingdom next year.

 

Experiencing an IOI inspires student to push their programming skills further when they return home in order to ensure they make the team next year. Conor Griffin is enrolling in DCU in September while Áron and Daniel are determined to return to the 2015 IOI in Kazakhstan.

 

The AIPO Irish delegation would like to thank Fidelity Investments and DCU for their generous support of this outreach project.