Four Wonder Kids to represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) to be held in Cairo in August, 2008

Indian leg of the competition culminated at the Sasken Communication Technologies Limited premises in Bangalore.

Bangalore , July 4, 2008: After challenging rounds of nation wide competition, school students Pradeep George Mathias from National Public School, Bangalore, Aayush Singhal from Saraswati Bal Mandir, Ghaziabad, B. Srivatsan from Sri Sankara Sr Sec School, Chennai and Nadeem Moidu from MES Indian School, Doha were selected today to represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). The winners were announced at a function of Indian Computing Olympiad, 2008 held at the premises of Sasken Communication Technologies Limited in Bangalore.

The Indian Computing Olympiad (ICO) is a nationwide competition organized annually by Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS) in co-ordination with CBSE. The goal of the competition is to identify school students, with outstanding skills in algorithms and computer programming. The winners will represent India at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), among the eight prestigious Olympiads in the world, at Cairo, in August 2008.

24 students short listed from more than 8000 students attended the camp out of which twenty two students attended the function today. These 24 students were representing various schools across the country after preliminary rounds. Speaking on the occasion, Dr G Venkatesh, Executive Director & Corporate Chief Technology Officer/Chief Strategy Officer, Sasken Communication Technologies Limited and executive council member of the IARCS, said, “We at Sasken have been associated with ICO for the past 7 years now. The event highlights Sasken’s continued support and commitment to the cause of education in India. We are motivating these wonder kids to bag the gold medal at International Olympiad in Informatics and do the country proud. We hope that these kids win the honours in Cairo and do the country proud.”

Prof Madhavan Mukund, Secretary of IARCS and the National Coordinator of ICO , added, “We held rigorous rounds of tests beginning April this year to select the best four school students. Sasken has been actively supporting us in providing the required training to these children and build technology champs of tomorrow. The response was overwhelming and more than 500 schools across India sent their nominations. The final selection was preceded by a training camp in Bangalore for two weeks.”

About Sasken
Sasken is an embedded telecom solutions company that helps businesses across the telecom value chain accelerate product development life cycles. Established in 1989, Sasken employs over 3600 people at its offices in India, Canada, China, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, UK and the U.S. Sasken’s Services Division works with global, Tier 1 companies across the telecom value chain of network equipment manufacturers, semiconductor vendors, terminal device manufacturers, test and measurement companies, and operators, providing software development, sustenance, and testingservices spanning a range of evolutionary telecom technologies.

About IARCS
The Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS) provides leadership in computing within India. Its members are internationally recognized researchers in Computer Science drawn from major institutions (IIT's, IISc, CMI, TIFR, IMSc, etc) from all over the country. IARCS aims at promoting excellence in Computing at all levels.

About IOI
The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is one of the most recognized computer science competitions in the world. The competition tasks are of an algorithm nature, however the contestants have to show basics skills as problem analysis, design of the algorithm needed, data structures, as well as programming and testing of their solutions. The winners of the IOI would, no doubt, be among the best young computer scientist in the world.

The IOI is one of the eight International Science Olympiads. The other seven are: Mathematics IMO (since 1959), Physics IPhO (since 1967), Chemistry IChO (since 1968), Biology IBO (Since 1990), Astronomy IAO (since 1996), Geography IGEO (since 1996), and The International Linguistic Olympiad ILO (since 2003), All them, are for young students, High School Students, less than 20 years old. www.ioi2008.org