TOKI brings home three medals

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 05/25/2008 12:01 PM  |  Discover

Members of the Indonesian team that competed in the 2008 Asia Pacific Informatics Olympiad (APIO) have won one gold medal and two bronze medals at the prestigious competition.

Their achievement has boosted the confidence of the team, which is now gearing up for the August 2008 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Cairo, Egypt. Irvan Jahja, a student at St. Aloysius senior high school in Bandung, West Java, won the gold medal while Reinadus Surya Pradhitya of Jakarta's Kanisius high school and Listiarso Wastuargo of SMAN 3 Yogyakarta each won a bronze medal. Irvan scored a perfect 300 points for answering all three questions correctly. His success in bringing home the gold was also significant, as it meant the Indonesian team was able to prevent the complete domination of the Chinese team, which collected seven golds. It is also Indonesia's first informatics Olympiad gold medal. "This year's achievement shows an improvement from our performance in the first APIO last year, when the Indonesian team got only one bronze medal," said Fauzan Joko of the official Informatics Olympiad Indonesian Team (TOKI). TOKI consists of nine high school students who are selected to prepare specifically for the annual series of international informatics Olympiads. It is fully supported by the National Education Ministry, particularly by the Directorate-General of Primary and Secondary Education. The APIO is an online programming contest open to Asia-Pacific high school students. All students work on and solve three competition problems under the guidance of supervisors in their own countries. Their work is then sent electronically to the country hosting that year's contest. Thailand was the host of the APIO 2008 while the host country of the inaugural APIO last year was Australia. The 2nd APIO saw the participation of students from 13 countries and one special administrative region: Australia, Bangladesh, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Macau SAR. Indonesia took part in its first informatics Olympiad in 1995, when it was held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. To date, TOKI has claimed one gold medal, eight silver medals and 12 bronze medals. These days, TOKI members can be spotted at the University of Indonesia's Depok campus, where they are training in preparation for the IOI 2008.

The first IOI was held in Bulgaria in 1989. Indonesia competed in the IOI for the first time in 1995 and came home with a silver medal.

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