Waikato student makes informatics Olympiad

First-year computer science student Boris Pfahringer is in Canada to contest the annual International Olympiad in Informatics as part of a four-strong New Zealand team.

The IOI is the world’s premier high school programming competition, and attracts 250,000 entrants from more than 100 countries. Competitors have to demonstrate their skills in problem analysis, design of algorithms and data structures, programming and testing.

More than 300 top computer science students are selected in national computing contests to compete in the final, which this year is being held over two days (August 16 and 18) at the University of Waterloo in southern Ontario.

Pfahringer joins Jamie McCloskey, Logan Glasson and Tony Sun in the New Zealand squad. Last year, he and McCloskey won bronze medals in the international competition.