Ireland wins Bronze medal and Honourable Mention at the International Linguistics Olympiad

The Irish team competing in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) last week won a bronze medal and an honourable mention in the competition.  The event took place remotely from the ADAPT Centre at Dublin City University.  The Irish team was made up of the top four students from the 2021 All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) which is run by ADAPT, the SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology.

The team was made up of Justin Cunningham from Patrician Secondary School, Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Oscar Despard (Sandford Park School, Ranelagh, Dublin), Natalia Timulakova (Holy Faith Clontarf, Dublin) and David Wright (Lucan Community College, Dublin). Oscar Despard won a bronze medal in the Individual Round and Natalia Timulakova won an honourable mention in the same round.

The students undertook online training with co-team leaders Professor Harold Somers and ADAPT’s Dr Cara Greene. The International Olympiad was held remotely and hosted by Latvia.  The competition saw the students come up against approximately 200 top linguistic problem-solvers, from 30 countries, to tackle some of the toughest puzzles in logic and linguistics in little-known languages from all over the globe. Over the two day event the students faced a 6-hour individual round paper and a 4-hour team round competition.

Speaking after the event Dr Cara Greene said: “Well done to the whole team. This is an immensely difficult competition with talented students from across the globe.  The students have done Ireland proud.”