TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — National Tainan First Senior High School student Li Po-ting (李柏霆) won gold and placed eighth individually at the 38th International Olympiad in Informatics, leading Taiwan’s four-student team.
Silver medals went to Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Senior High School students Lin Chi-you (林祺祐), who placed 56th, and Huang Yu-lun (黃宇綸), who placed 77th. Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School student Liao Yu-hsiang (廖宥翔) received an honorable mention and finished 200th, per UDN.
Taiwan ranked eighth internationally by gold-medal count among 92 countries and 375 competitors at the Uzbekistan-hosted event, per CNA. The four representatives were selected from 2,766 students at 396 schools through three rounds of domestic selection.
Li said a Scratch competition in sixth grade sparked his interest in programming before he moved on to LeetCode, Codeforces, and AtCoder, according to UDN. Lin began with robotics and C programming in junior high school before teaching himself Python and pursuing competitive programming.
Huang, a sixth-dan Go player, said using AI tools to review games drew him toward algorithms and artificial intelligence. Liao began learning C++ during the summer before high school and continued competing after failing to advance beyond an earlier Olympiad training stage, per UDN.
The Education Ministry awards NT$200,000 (about US$6,250) for gold medals, NT$100,000 for silver, and NT$50,000 for bronze. Medal winners may also qualify for special university admission pathways.
