A SENIOR High School student from the De La Salle University won first place in the recently concluded National Olympiad in Informatics held online last August 8 to 9. He scored 609 points.

Dan Alden Baterisna, who won a bronze medal in last year’s 31st International Olympiad in Informatics held in Baku, Azerbaijan, topped this year’s NOI.PH Finals to secure a slot once again in the national team.

Coming in second was Steven Chua of British School-Manila, who scored an impressive 574.54 points.

Baterisna received a gold medal and P6,000 cash prize, while Chua secured silver and P3,000.

With the finish, they automatically clinched two of the four spots on the Philippine team in the IOI.

The NOI.PH Finals has 31 participants out of 148 during the national eliminations held in January. The finalists each solved five challenging programming tasks in each day’s five-hour session. Contestants used their programming and analytical skills to create data structures and algorithms to solve each task using a program.

Also securing places in the top 10 were:

3rd place – Steven Reyes of Saint Jude Catholic School (565.74 points)

4th place – Dion Stephan Ong of the Ateneo de Manila Senior High School (503 points)

5th place – Frederick Ivan Michael Tan of Philippine Science High School – Main (493 points)

6th place – Raphael Dylan Dalida of PSHS Main (468.08 points)

7th place – Ron Mikhael Surara of PSHS Bicol (449.68 points)

8th place – Enruco Rolando Martinez of PSHS Main (273.96 points)

9th place – Harvey Shawn Chua of PSHS Main (271.9 points)

10th place – Marc Joshua Ayalde of PSHS SOCCSKSARGEN (268.11 points)

The remaining two slots in the national team will be filled after a training session among the top finalists.

NOI.PH President Marte Soliza congratulated the winners and urged the finalists to do their best in the training session.

“The organizing committee would like to thank the Department of Science and Technology – Science Education Institute for their generous support for the event. We would also like to thank our volunteers from Ateneo de Manila University’s Computer Society of Ateneo and the University of the Philippines’ Association for Computing Machinery, as well as our testers and illustrators for helping out. We hope for your continued support as we move to the selection of our delegation to the International Olympiad in Informatics 2020,” Soliza said.

Likewise, DOST-SEI’s Director, Dr. Josette Biyo, congratulated NOI.PH for successful full-online national finals.

“Informatics as a field is something exciting for young Filipinos and we are very glad that the NOI.PH leads in developing the innate analytical and computing talents of our students. We congratulate the winners and look forward to their journeys, not just in the IOI, but in their other endeavors,” Biyo said.

The IOI 2020, which was originally set in July in Singapore, is moved to September 21 to 22 and will be held online.