First-year HSE University Student Wins Silver in Informatics Olympiad
On October 23, the European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics came to a close in Turkey. The Russian team, which included HSE University Faculty of Computer Science student Vladislava Sinitsyna, won two gold medals and two silvers. A total of 43 countries took part in the competition.
The competition, which is the first student Olympiad dedicated to promoting interest in computer science among girls, was first held in 2021 in Zurich, Switzerland. The Russian team also won gold medals then, becoming the event’s record holders.
This year, the Russian team once again came out on top, earning the most points in the overall team score. The team members were Vladislava Sinitsyna, 1st-year student of the HSE University Faculty of Computer Science (silver medal); Darya Grekova, 9th-grade student of Moscow Physics and Mathematics School No. 57 (gold medal); Ekaterina Poray, 1st-year student at MIPT (gold medal), and Ekaterina Khosseyn, 11th-grade student of Moscow School No. 179 (silver medal). The head of the team was Elena Andreeva, Head of the Department of Information Science at AESC MSU Kolmogorov boarding school. The team participated in the competition remotely from MIPT.
Vladislava is a bachelor’s student in Applied Mathematics and Information Science. Evgeny Sokolov, her programme’s academic supervisor, said he was happy to hear about the Russian team’s victory.
Evgeny Sokolov
‘It is always nice when our students win intellectual competitions, especially at the international level. It shows the community that our students have a very high level of ability. And it lets the students themselves feel confident in their qualifications. It is good that the students manage to find time for competitions despite their considerable academic workload.’
Vladislava Sinitsyna, first-year student of Applied Mathematics and Information Science at HSE University, spoke to the HSE News Service about her participation in the competition.
The Olympiad
I got into the national team based on the results of the All-Russian Olympiad of School Students in Informatics. The European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics was held in two five-hour sessions, each of which featured four tasks sorted by difficulty. For each task, we had to write a program that would either answer a set task based on input data or interact with the jury programme and understand the structure of a mathematical object, eg a graph.
Silver and Gold
I was not thinking about earning a certain number of points or winning a certain place. I wanted to solve problems and test myself. The sessions themselves went fine, but there were mistakes in terms of time management. Overall, I could have scored higher. At first, I felt disappointed that I did not have enough points to win gold, but I was satisfied with the final result. When you are a university student, Olympiads are a satisfying activity. I went to the second session thinking about the fact that I had a full five hours to zone out of everything else and enjoy solving problems.
Taking part in Olympiads is definitely worth it! It is a great opportunity to test yourself, compete with others, solve interesting problems and gain cool experience.