WATERLOO - The University of Waterloo will hold a special public launch event this week to celebrate the prestigious International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) coming to UW in August 2010.

On Friday at 1:30 p.m., UW invites students, staff, faculty, other partners and the general public to attend the launch. Research In Motion is the title sponsor of IOI 2010. The event takes place in the William G. Davis Computer Research Centre on the UW campus.

David Johnston, UW president; Thomas F. Coleman, dean of mathematics; David Yach, RIM's chief technology officer for software; and Troy Vasiga, IOI 2010 director and a professor of computer science, will speak and answer questions about the event.

"Waterloo will be the first Canadian university to host the IOI and organizing the event is a major undertaking," said Coleman. "The university hopes that many firms and organizations will attend the launch event to find out more about IOI 2010 and partner with UW to help present Waterloo on the world stage as a first-class destination in the technology sphere."

The annual week-long competition, which has been held since 1989, features 400 of the world's top computer science high school students, who are selected through national computing contests. About 250,000 young people from some 100 countries compete each year to represent their country. IOI 2010 runs from Aug. 14 to 21, 2010.

The IOI is the world's premier high school computer programming competition. The goals of the IOI are to bring together, challenge and give recognition to young students from around the world who are the most talented in informatics (computer programming), as well as to foster friendship among these students from diverse cultures.

More information on the public launch event for IOI 2010 can be found at:
http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/ioi2010launchevent/.