Four make it to International Informatics Olympiad

After several challenging rounds of contest nationwide, four students were selected on Thursday to represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2006 to be held in Mexico later this year.

Kshitij Bansal and Harpreet Singh (both from Apeejay School, Noida), Prateek Karandikar (Mother's International, Delhi) and Swarun Kumar (P S Senior Secondary School, Chennai) emerged victorious in the final round of the Indian National Olympiad in Informatics (INOI) held in Bangalore. They were felicitated by Sasken Communication Technologies Limited here.

The INOI is a national-level contest organised annually by the Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS) in coordination with the CBSE.

The goal of the contest is to identify school students with outstanding skills in algorithms and computer programming, according to IARCS secretary Madhavan Mukund.

Speaking on the occasion, G Venkatesh, chief technology and strategy officer and head of products division, Sasken said that the company has associated with the INOI for the last five years.

"We are motivating the kids to bag gold medal at the IOI and fetch laurels to the country," he added.

The event saw a vigorous participation from over 600 students representing over 500 schools in the country. The IOI is one of the most recognised of computer science competitions in the world.