CEOI 2020 – Central-European Olympiad in Informatics to begin in Nagykanizsa

14/08/2020

CEOI, held from 23 to 29 August, is the most important competition in informatics for secondary school students in the region, that has been organised annually since 1994 with the participation of fourteen teams – from the eight founding countries and one non-regional guest country.

Hungary is one of the founders of the Olympiad and has been the host numerous times already: in Szeged (1995), Zalaegerszeg (2001), Sárospatak (2005) and Tata (2012). The 2020 contest is organised by the Neumann Janos Computer Science Association, the municipality of Nagykanizsa and the Department of Informatics of ELTE, supported by the Ministry of Innovation and Technology.

Each participating team can only have four secondary school students, not older than 20 years old, and two adult team leaders. Every country chooses their competing team through a preliminary selection process. The Hungarian students are known to achieve good results in the CEOI: in the past twenty-five years they have collected fifty-six medals altogether. Last year they returned with one gold and three bronze medals from the 2019 CEOI in Slovakia. For the first time in the history of the contest did a Hungarian student achieve an absolute first place. This year there are two Hungarian teams competing due to Hungary being the host.

The members of the Hungarian teams are:

• Bálint Horcsin, year 11 student from the Németh László Secondary School of Budapest
• Péter Varga, year 11 student from the Árpád Secondary School of Óbuda
• Kornél György Szabó, year 11 student from the Fazekas Mihály Secondary School of Budapest
• Dávid Bertalan Bukva, year 11 student from the Fazekas Mihály Secondary School of Budapest
• Milán Székely, year 9 student from the Veres Péter Secondary School of Békásmegyer
• Gellért Tóth, year 11 student from the Árpád Secondary School of Óbuda
• Péter Szente, year 12 student from the Batthyány Lajos Secondary School of Nagykanizsa
• Márton Tamás Németh, year 9 student from the Batthyány Lajos Secondary School of Nagykanizsa

The Central-European Olympiad in Informatics is considered to be the pre-contest of IOI, the International Olympiad in Informatics, the most prestigious computer science competition in the world for secondary school students, UNESCO being its patron. Thus, participating in CEOI is an important milestone in preparing for the global contest.