The team representing Canada at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) for 2026 returned from Tashkent, Uzbekistan with four medals. Haoyang Jin and Alex Zhiyuan Lin both earned silver and Nathan Katov and Jerry Zhou earned bronze.
Troy Vasiga and Paul McGrath, Associate Professors at Waterloo, trained and led the team of four.
"I am very proud of the four team members both in terms of how they performed during the contest, but more importantly, how they gelled as a team and represented Canada with honour, positivity and generosity,” says Vasiga. "They worked hard, supported each other and put in their best effort."
Connecting students from around the world
The annual competition brings together exceptionally talented students from around the world to compete in a computer science competition and share scientific and cultural experiences. The competition focuses on algorithmic problem solving. Contestants must demonstrate fundamental IT skills like problem analysis, design of algorithms and data structures, programming and testing.
It is one of many international science olympiads, alongside those in mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics. Each year, participating countries typically send a delegation of four contestants to compete individually and aim to maximize their scores by solving a set of informatics problems during two competition days.
Contests like the IOI give talented students an opportunity to compete on a global scale while stimulating interest in informatics and information technology. Alongside the contest, students have the chance to build relationships with other competitors from around the world.
It takes a village
The Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC), along with the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, supports the team that represents Canada at the IOI each year. This includes inviting top performers on the Canadian Computing Competition (CCC) from across Canada to the Canadian Computing Olympiad (CCO). The CCO is a week-long learning experience featuring workshops, a contest and other extracurricular activities. Top scorers on this contest at the CCO are then selected to represent team Canada at the IOI. The CEMC trains the selected students for the IOI and leads the delegation at the event.
“We’re also grateful to Hudson River Trading (HRT) for their sponsorship of Team Canada at the 2026 IOI,” adds Vasiga. “Their sponsorship helps with supporting the CEMC's competitive programming initiatives for youth across Canada.”
Story by Lata Punetha