Eight Medals for Bulgaria from 21st International Olympiad in Informatics in Plovdiv

Bulgarian nationals won four silver and four bronze medals from the 21st International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) held from 8 to 15 of August in Plovdiv, exactly 20 years after the first Olympiad in Informatics in Pravetz (1989).

The President of Republic of Bulgaria - Mr. Georgi Parvanov, who was patron of the event, declared the official opening of the IOI with a solemn speech, memorializing the significant anniversary.

Bulgaria demonstrated excellent performance, continuing the tradition of a very strong national presence at one of the most prestigious international competitions in informatics for students under 20 years. As a host country, Bulgaria participated with two teams and a team, representing the city in which the competition was held i.e. Plovdiv. In total - national contestants were 12.

The Bulgarian team, which participated in the official ranking of the Olympiad, won two silver and two bronze medals -silvers went to Rumen Hristov and Momchil Tomov, while Anton Anastasov and Ivan Georgiev took bronze medals. There were also medalists from the second national team: silver for Stefan Avramov and Momchil Ivanov and bronze for Mihail Kovachev. Yasen Trifonov from the third Bulgarian team in informatics brought bronze medal for the host town - Plovdiv.

Rumen Hristov is the Bulgarian national, who had the greatest chance for gold medal reaching a result of 596 points. He is only 15 years old and is currently 10th grade student in Mathematical School in Shumen, Bulgaria.

Momchil Tomov, Rumen and Stefan participated in last year's International Olympiad in Cairo, Egypt, from which Momchil and Rumen returned with silver medals, while Stefan took bronze. In May this year, Rumen ranked second in the final round of Musala Soft and PC Magazine Bulgaria programming contest konkurs.musala.com, which was held under the patronage of the President.

This year Musala Soft was an official sponsor of IOI 2009. Besides financial support, the company provided gifts to the participants, which were bestowed during the official awards ceremony on August 14 in the Antique Theater in Plovdiv. Many of the Bulgarian Olympians from the International Olympiads in Informatics, including from 20 years ago, are former and some of them even present employees of Musala Soft. In the company they continue to grow up not only as professionals in the information technology field, but also as individuals. Company's policy is exceptionally oriented towards promoting the growth and development of young talents in informatics and for building their competitive spirit, for studying Informatics and for building a strong Bulgarian society in the field of Informatics. Evidence of company's dedication are the many initiatives, which are supported by Musala Soft such as: IT Leaders Academy, Programming Competition - konkurs.musala.com, InfoMan - the Bulgarian portal with Informatics resources and online library and other similar initiatives, which are entirely with non-commercial purposes.

A total of 26 gold medals were distributed to participants at the XXI International Olympiad in Informatics in Plovdiv. 52 of the competitors were given silver awards, 75 - bronze. None of the participants, however, manage to collect the full number of competition points - a total of 800.

IOI 2009 gathered talents from 83 countries worldwide. In 2010, the host country of the Olympiad will be Canada.