Kieran Horgan.
Last weekend Kieran Horgan from Mallow was selected to compete at the All Ireland Programming Olympiad AIPO. This is an annual computer programming Olympiad held at Dublin City University (DCU). The goals of the competition are to encourage and reward young programmers, (male and female). Promote contacts among programmers in Ireland and select a team for the International Olympiad. Each individual competing, is assigned to individual computers and given 5 hours to solve a selection of programming tasks in a controlled lab. CDYS Youth Work Ireland, were delighted to hear the news that Kieran, who is only 15 years old and is a mentor and participant at our Coder Dojo Club at the Big Blue Cube in Mallow managed to become one of the 8 finalists. The 8 finalists will now be invited to attend a 3-day IOI training camp in DCU during the month of June. From these eight the top four students will travel on an all-expenses-paid trip to the international contest to compete against countries from all over the world. This year the international competition will take place in Kazan, Russia during August with a cultural trip to Moscow beforehand. Although countries are represented by teams of (at most) four people, it is an individual contest and medals are awarded on that basis.
Kieran is also a member of the Robotics team in Davis College and is heading off to America with the school in the summer, so it looks like he will have a pretty busy summer. Kieran is no stranger from winning competitions as last year he won, best web designer, creative web coding, best individual project and also won the Grand Prix Award from Eir Junior Spider 2015. CDYS and all the young people involved in Coder Dojo Mallow would like to congratulate him for achieving so much so young and wish him the very best of luck at the next stage of this competition.