The 31st International Olympiad in Informatics Canadian team returned home from Baku, Azerbaijan with three medals, and Zixiang (Peter) Zhou ranked third in the world out of 327 competitors.
“Placing 3rd in the world is awesome,” said Associate Dean, Undergraduate Admissions and Outreach Troy Vasiga, and leader of the team. “Peter participated in the Japanese Olympiad, Central European Olympiad, and Russian and Chinese contests to prepare. It obviously paid off.”
Vasiga and Zhou appeared on “Good Morning Azerbaijan” along with the American team member who was ranked first in the world and his team leader.
Vasiga and lecturer Carrie Knoll accompanied the four-person Canadian team to Baku after their training at the University of Waterloo. This is the best finish since 2000 when one of the Canadian team members tied for second place. With the addition of Zhou’s gold medal, Canada has now won 15 gold medals since they started participating in the IOI in 1996.
“Our team leaders provide environments for practice and advice for how to be successful on an informatics contest, but fellow participants can be the best resources the students have,” said Knoll. “Even though IOI participants compete as individuals, one goal of our training time is for the Canadian participants to spend some time together before travelling to the contest.”
The other two medals went to Victor Rong (silver) and George Gong Chen (bronze). The fourth member of the team, Kevin Wan, also had a strong showing.
IOI is an annual international informatics competition for high school students. Each nation that competes sends four contestants who compete on an individual basis to solve three problems in five hours over each of the two days of competition. The rest of the time contestants were taken around the city of Baku by their team guide, a student at ADA University.