The four contestants of the Bulgarian Junior Team in Informatics are in their final stage of preparation for the second European Junior Olympiad in Informatics eJOI 2018 taking place in the Russian city of Innopolis between July 26th and August 1st. All of them already hold medals from the first edition of eJOI in 2017.
Andon Todorov, Georgi Petkov, Konstantin Kamenov and Victor Kozhuharov will be accompanied by their Team Leader Prof. Dr. Sc. Katalina Grigorova, Deputy Team Leader Peter Petrov, Prof. Krassimir Manev, President of eJOI, Biserka Yovcheva, member of eJOI International Committee and Elena Marinova, founder of the Board of eJOI of representative of the politics and business and President of Musala Soft.
Musala Soft was among the initiators of the first European Junior Olympiad in Informatics held in Sofia in September 2017. 22 teams of the Council of Europe member countries took part in the the contest. The Olympiad was organized by a total of 90 people – Initiative, Organizational, Technical and Scientific Committees, the Natural Sciences Olympic Team Association and volunteers. Patrons of the first edition of eJOI were: Rumen Radev, President of the Republic of Bulgaria, Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner on Digital Economy and Society and Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner on Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. Initiators of the pilot edition of eJOI were: Prof. Krassimir Manev, former President of the International Olympiad in Informatics and current President of eJOI, Biserka Yovcheva, lecturer at Shumen University “Konstantin Preslavski” and founder of A&B School of Informatics, Alexey Hristov, Chairman of the Board of the Natural Sciences Olympic Teams Association and Elena Marinova, Chair of the Development Board of NSOTA and President of Musala Soft.
Within a week, eJOI 2017 participants experienced unforgettable emotions and gathered a lot of new impressions and memories from Bulgaria. They had the chance to compete with almost 100 IT talents aged up to 15,5 years from across Europe and were also introduced to an important part of the cultural and historical heritage of the country while sightseeing in Sofia and Plovdiv. Together, they became part of a founding competition in the area of information technologies.
eJOI 2017 gathered and awarded the best young talents in competitive programming from 22 Council of Europe member countries putting in the public debate the need for national strategy for development of young talents in informatics. The pilot edition of eJOI proved that Bulgaria has the ambition and works for strong IT industry and a leadership position on the IT map of the world. eJOI 2017 proved that this could be achieved through joint efforts by the Government, European and local academic institutions, NGOs and business.