The Macedonian pupils have completed yet another successful year at the international competitions in informatics. At the last international competition for this year, the 27th Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (BOI 2019), which was held in Athens, Greece, from September 9th to 14th, our students achieved another great success, by winning 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.

The silver medal for Macedonia was won by Martin Dinev from the village of Pirava, Valandovo, while the two bronze medals were won by Andrej Velichkovski from Kumanovo and Blagojche Pavleski from Prilep. The fourth member of the Macedonian team was Vladimir Sharkovski from Skopje, and the team was led by Emil Stankov and Vladislav Bidikov from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE).

The president of the Computer Society of Macedonia (CSM), prof. Mile Jovanov, PhD, who is also the president of the Olympiad for many years, says that together with the current result, this year the Macedonian pupils have won 2 silver and 5 bronze medals at the international informatics competitions in Greece, Azerbaijan and Slovenia, thus extending the continuity of excellent representations internationally and once again confirming that with the knowledge they possess in the area of computer science, they can proudly stand side by side with the pupils of their own age group across the entire world. What's more, this year in Athens, the strongest ever medal (by points) has been won for Macedonia – i.e. it was very close to the gold medals.

The main organizer of BOI 2019 is the Greek Computer Society, with the support of the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. BOI is a regional computer science competition for high school students, in which each member – country traditionally participates with 4 of its best students selected through the annual national competitions in programming. This year's edition featured a total of 44 competitors from the following 12 Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey. In addition, as representatives of a guest – country of the Olympiad, students from Italy participated as unofficial competitors.

The pupils from the Macedonian BOI 2019 team were selected through the annual competition cycle, which is regularly organized by the Computer Society of Macedonia (CSM), and this year was supported by the Agency for Youth and Sports, the Fund for Innovation and Technology Development, the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), as well as the socially responsible companies Netcetera, Grabit, Doxteam, Sorsix, Semos Education and Hasselt. The competitions are held through the mendo.mk system which is available all year round to all interested competitors.

The next, 28th in a row, Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (BOI 2020), will be held next year in Slovenia.