At the 30th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), which was held from September 1st till September 8th 2018 in Tsukuba, Japan, the Macedonian high school students achieved yet another huge success. The Macedonian team at this world-wide prestigious competition for high school students in the area of programming won a silver and a bronze medal.

Members of our team were Vladimir Maksimovski, Martin Dinev, Andrej Velichkovski and Filip Mihov, as contestants, and Vesna Dimitrievska and Emil Stankov from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje, as team leaders. With this achievement, our young pupils once again have shown that Macedonia should be proud of them. During the last ten years, our representatives at IOI have continuously achieved excellent results, winning medals almost every year. However, this year’s success is even more significant because of the silver medal that has been won, which is the second such medal in the Macedonian history of participations at this Olympiad.

335 students from 87 countries all over the world took part in IOI 2018. In such a strong competition, the winner of the second silver medal in the history of Macedonia was Vladimir Maksimovski, whereas Andrej Velichkovski won a bronze medal. It should be noted that the other two Macedonian contestants also achieved strong results, where Martin Dinev was very close to winning a bronze medal as well – around 10 points (out of the possible 600) separated him from this outstanding achievement.

Since its first participation as an independent country at IOI in 1996, Macedonia has achieved 2 silver and 16 bronze medals.

IOI is the most prestigious annual international programming competition for high school students which is traditionally held in one of the member countries of the IOI community. Each year, national programming competitions are being organized in almost 90 countries around the world. A total of about 250 000 students participate in these competitions, all of them with a single aspiration: to win the great honor and privilege of representing their own country at the IOI.

The official web site of IOI 2018 is: http://www.ioi2018.jp. The 31st International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2019) will be held next year, in Baku, Azerbaijan.