"31st International Olympiad in Informatics in Baku to have major effect"

The 31st International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) has started in Baku today. The event is held with the support of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan, ADA University, Ministry of Transport, Communication and High Technologies of the Republic of Azerbaijan and other government agencies.

The rector of the ADA, IOI 2019 honorary co-chairman Hafiz Pashayev, speaking at the official opening ceremony of the Olympiad being held at the Baku Convention Center, noted in the first place that the University hopes to benefit from this massive event in the future. "ADA established the Faculty of Information Technology Engineering in 2013. Many its graduates now work for international companies such as Microsoft and Google. My main goal is to train personnel for Azerbaijan in such an important field," he said.

The rector noted that the university students have a promising future. "The education they receive here takes them to a new level. I hope that our students will also be among the winners, which in the future will affect the attraction of new young talents in this area," Hafiz Pashayev said.

He also said that the university intends to develop and expand this area. “We have plans not only for the IT sphere, we want to contribute to other areas of engineering. In this regard, in the future we are going to open a specialized science camp near our university. We started to cooperate with the world's leading universities. Our main difficulty now is linked to attracting high-quality teachers. We have come to the conclusion that we will train teachers on our own. For this purpose, we will send our students to master's and doctoral programs at advanced world universities, and in the future they will become our leading experts," the rector of the ADA said.

According to him, despite the fact that the university has already gained a certain reputation, his biggest desire is to make the university the country's leading IT and engineering institution. "Therefore, the significance of this Olympiad in Baku is that we want to invite guests and participants to our university and show them our capabilities, tell them about the university scholarship program, so that they would come to us willingly in the future. I would like to express special gratitude to the Azerbaijani government and sponsors who helped to the hold this Olympiad," Hafiz Pashayev concluded.

Azerbaijan's Education Minister, IOI 2019 co-chairman Ceyhun Bayramov noted that the holding of this Olympiad in Azerbaijan is one of the significant events for education in the republic. "To this day, the Azerbaijani teams which represented our country at this prestigious international competition 24 times won 1 silver and 4 bronze medals," he recalled.

"Over the 30 years of its existence, the International Olympiad in Informatics has come a long way. This indicates the interest of different countries, the number of which is increasing every year. If 13 countries participated in the first olympiad, 87 countries are participating in Baku this year, and one country is participating as an observer," Ceyhun Bayramov said.

ADA University Vice-Rector Fariz Ismailzad, in turn, said that an official delegation consisting of more than 600 pupils, teachers and experts from 88 countries and regions, including the Azerbaijani team, have registered to participate in the 31st International Olympiad in Informatics.