History

The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the most prestigious international computing contest at the high school level, was launched in 1989 by the the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), designed in the spirit of several other prominent international high-school olympiads. In 1992, Dr. Don Piele, professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin Parkside, heard about the IOI, and founded the USACO in order to bring a team from the USA to the event. The first USA team attending the 1992 IOI was formed from top individuals in the International Computer Problem-Solving Contest, a popular programming contest Don had organized since 1981. From 1993 onward, USACO finalists have been selected via a national competition, and invited to a rigorous academic summer training camp to further improve their skills. The training camp was held at the University of Wisconsin Parkside for many years; it was held at Colorado College from 2005-2007, and then moved to Clemson University in 2010.

For its first two decades, the USACO was directed by Don along with Head Coach Dr. Rob Kolstad and a dedicated volunteer staff, many of whom are former USA team members from past IOIs. Over the years, Rob built out the on-line infrastructure of the USACO to allow us to run monthly competitions at multiple levels of difficulty each year, in addition to the final US Open competition. Together with legendary coach Hal Burch, Rob also established the USACO training pages, which have helped teach algorithmic problem-solving to tens of thousands of students from around 90 countries worldwide. After Don and Rob's retirement from running USACO, the organization is currently headed up by Dr. Brian Dean, a computer science professor at Clemson University who has been a member of the USACO staff for more than two decades.

USA teams attending the IOI have shown steady and consistent improvement in their performance over the years, and the USA now regularly places among the top countries attending the IOI. The following is a list of all of our past IOI team members and the medals they earned at IOI. Please click below to see more information about the finalists and team for a particular year.

2019: Baku, Azerbaijan

Benjamin Qi (1st place)
Eric Zhang
Daniel Zhang
William Lin

2017: Tehran, Iran

Zhezheng Luo (3rd place)
(*) Benjamin Qi
(*) Dhruv Rohatgi
(*) Eric Zhang

2015: Almaty, Kazakhstan

Andrew He (3rd place)
Daniel Chiu
Alexander Wei
Demi Guo

2013: Brisbane, Australiia

Joshua Brakensiek
Scott Wu (5th place)
Steven Hao
Johnny Ho

2011: Pattaya, Thailand

Wenyu Cao (6th place)
Albert Gu
Johnny Ho
Nathan Pinsker

2009: Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Brian Hamrick
Neal Wu (7th place)
Wenyu Cao
Travis Hance

2007: Zagreb, Croatia

Richard McCutchen (9th place)
John Pardon (5th place)
Ye Wang
David Benjamin

2005: Nowy Sacz, Poland

Richard McCutchen
John Pardon
Eric Price (1st place)
Alex Schwendner (8th place)

2003: Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA

Tiankai Liu (9th place)
Alex Schwendner (6th place)
Timothy Abbott
Anders Kaseorg

2001: Tampere, Finland

Reid Barton (1st place)
Vladimir Novakowski
Tom Widland
Steven Sivek

1999: Antala-Belek, Turkey

Dan Wright
David Chen
Percy Liang
Ben Mathews

1997: Cape Town, South Africa

Matt Craighead
Dan Adkins
Russ Cox
Ben Mathews

1995: Eindhoven, Netherlands

Russ Cox
Hubert Chen
Dan Adkins
Valentin Spitkovsky
Erika Hoffeld

1993: Mendoza, Argentina

Hal Burch
Mehul Patel
Eric Pabst
Yonah Schmeilder

2018: Tsukuba, Japan

Benjamin Qi (1st place)
Eric Zhang
Spencer Compton
William Hu

2016: Kazan, Russia

Daniel Chiu
Lawrence Li
Dhruv Rohatgi
Calvin Lee

2014: Taipei, Taiwan

Scott Wu (1st place)
Steven Hao (6th place)
Joshua Brakensiek
Andrew He

2012: Sirmione, Italy

Johnny Ho (1st place)
Mitchell Lee (10th place)
Scott Wu
Daniel Ziegler

2010: Waterloo, Canada

Wenyu Cao (4th place)
Michael Cohen (5th place)
Neal Wu
Brian Hamrick

2008: Cairo, Egypt

David Benjamin (8th place)
Neal Wu (10th place)
Brian Hamrick
Jacob Steinhardt

2006: Mérida, Mexico

John Pardon (5th place)
Richard McCutchen
George Boxer
Bohua Zhan

2004: Athens, Greece

Brian Jacokes (6th place)
Anders Kaseorg
Eric Price
Alex Schwendner

2002: Yong-In, Korean Republic

Tiankai Liu (4th place)
Jacob Burnim
Adam D'Angelo
Alex Schwendner

2000: Beijing, China

Reid Barton (10th place)
John Danaher
Percy Liang
Greg Price

1998: Setúbal, Portugal

Adrian Sox
Matt Craighead
Chuong Do
Alex Wissner-Gross

1996: Veszprém, Hungary

Dan Adkins
Matt Craighead
Keldon Jones
Joseph Turian

1994: Haninge, Sweden

Mehul Patel
Brian Dean
James Ayers
Hubert Chen

1992: Bonn, Germany

Nate Bronson (1st place)
Shawn Smith (1st place)
Russell Hunt
Mike Prior

(*) = Unable to attend IOI due to visa issues.