Taiwan won one gold and three silver medals in the 2010 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Canada, education officials said yesterday. Chen Ting-wei, who is going to National Taiwan University's (NTU) department of information engineering this fall, grabbed the gold, officials from the education ministry said.
His teammate, Yang Chun-pai, who will join Chen at the same department of NTU, took one of the three silvers.
The other two silver medals went to Li Jui-min and Lai Yu-hsuan.
They competed in the annual games, which took place in Waterloo city from Aug. 14-21, against more than 330 students from over 80 countries.
The IOI is an annual computer science competition for secondary school students initiated by Blagovest Sendov, a Bulgarian professor in 1987. Two years later in 1989, the first IOI was held in Pravetz, Bulgaria.
Taiwan joined the international competition for the first time in 1994. In 2009, its students won two gold and two silver medals in the games in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, marking Taiwan's best-ever performance in the contest.
The Taiwan team manager, Ho Jung-kuei, a professor of the National Taiwan Normal University, said this year's results may not be the best ever, but he is already "very satisfied," according to the United Evening News.
He was also quoted as confirming that Taiwan has won the rights to host the 2014 IOI games.
Ho said that the Taiwan team was selected from among 100 students recommended by their senior high schools.
Thirty of them remained after the preliminary round of screening, Ho said. And after four weeks of training and tests, the final four were picked.
He said the competition has been growing fiercer each year. China's four-member team was chosen among 70,000 candidates, Ho said.
He said the Taiwan team was the not the best, but it was a "strong team," according to the United Evening News.
But he said the most important thing about the games was not the winning, but the opportunity to interact with top students from other countries.
The gold medalist, Chen Ting-wei, just graduated from the Affiliated Senior High School of NTNU.
Two of the silver medalists Lee Jui-min and Yang Chun-pai are from the Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School.
The third silver winner, Lai Yu-hsuan, is a student of the National Taichung First Senior High School.
The Taiwan team will stay in Cananda for a sightseeing tour before returning to Taiwan on Aug. 25, the NTNU professor said.
In Taiwan, Chen's father said he was proud of his son's achievement at the games, according to the United Evening News.
He said his son has a lot of ideas and different interests, and he also loves playing bridge.
Yang's mother was quoted as saying that her son demonstrated his computer talents at an early age.
The family had hoped that he could become a doctor, but he has chosen his own direction, the mother said.
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