Indian-origin teen, son of IIT-JEE topper, wins gold at world’s toughest programming contest

The 36th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was held in Egypt this year. Agastya Goel won the gold medal at the programming contest with a score of 438.97 out of 600. Kangyang Zhou of China placed first with a staggering score of 600 out of 600.

A total of 34 students won the gold at the International Olympiad in Informatics this year, including Kshitij Sodani of India with rank 21.

For California-based Agastya Goel, this is the second gold medal he has won at IOI. His achievement was lauded on social media, with one X account comparing him to his father, Ashish Goel, who topped the IIT-JEE entrance test in 1990 and went on to have a storied career with companies like Twitter and Stripe.

“Agastya Goel just got his 2nd IOI Gold medal for the US, the hardest programming contest for high schoolers in the world. He was #4 overall. His father Ashish Goel was #1 of ~1M in the IIT exam 1990 in India and a PhD and CS algo professor at Stanford! Like father, like son,” the X account wrote.

What is the International Olympiad in Informatics?

The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming competition and one of the five International Science Olympiads. The competition was started in May 1989 by UNESCO.

The contest is held over two days where contestants are presented with problems that test their computer programming/coding skills and problem-solving of algorithmic nature.

Who is Ashish Goel?

Ashish Goel is an American professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He was born in Uttar Pradesh and graduated with a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur in 1994, before moving to the United States to get his doctorate from Stanford.

Ashish Goel’s research covers a wide range of topics in computer science and computational social science, including computer networks, theoretical computer science, molecular self-assembly, algorithmic game theory, and computational social choice.

He worked with Twitter in the company’s early days, and has been credited for designing its monetisation model.