At the 26th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), held in Taipei, Taiwan, from July 23rd till July 30th, the Macedonian high school students achieved a magnificent result. The Macedonian team at this world’s most prestigious programming competition for high school students, which consisted of 4 contestants: Bojan Serafimov, Kliment Serafimov, Vasil Kuzevski and Filip Bedzhovski, led by Mile Jovanov and Emil Stankov, won one silver and two bronze medals.

The achieved result represents the largest success for Macedonia since the introduction of the International Olympiad in Informatics in 1989. At the same time, this result is an affirmation that the Macedonian pupils with their acquired knowledge in the field of computer science can stand side by side with the best pupils in the whole world. The silver medal is an accomplishment that a small number of countries can be proud to have ever achieved, and this was the first such medal won by a Macedonian pupil.

IOI is the most prestigious annual programming competition for high school students worldwide, which is traditionally held in one of the member countries of the IOI community. 250000 young people from around 90 countries compete each year to represent their country at the IOI.

A total of 315 students from 80 countries participated at this year’s IOI, having passed through national qualifying programming competitions in their own respective country. In such a strong competition, winner of the first silver medal for Macedonia in the history of IOI was Bojan Serafimov, and winners of the two bronze medals were Vasil Kuzevski and Kliment Serafimov.

The 27th IOI will be held from July 26th till August 2nd next year, in Almaty, Kazakhstan. For more information on the event, visit the official web site of IOI 2014: http://www.ioi2014.org/