National Selection for International AI Olympiad Saturday

Bangladesh will hold its national selection round for the International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad (IAIO) on Saturday, bringing together young talents to compete in mathematics and machine learning for a place on the country's team for the 2027 international competition in Vietnam. Students who perform well will advance through further training and selection stages before the final team is chosen.

The national round will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, at the Institute of Information Technology (IIT) of the University of Dhaka.

The initiative to select Bangladesh's national team for the IAIO is being organised for the second time. The Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) is organising the event, with the University of Dhaka's Institute of Information Technology serving as the knowledge and venue partner.

Online registration was open from October 15 to 27. More than 50 students from grades six to twelve registered for the competition, representing over 40 educational institutions across the country.

Participants are aged between 11 and 19, with students in grades eleven and twelve making up the largest group.

Competitors are coming from 14 districts, including Nilphamari, Bogura, Rajshahi, Pabna, Jashore, Khulna, Narail, Barishal, Chattogram and Sylhet. Seven of Bangladesh's eight administrative divisions will be represented in this year's national round.

More than half of the registered participants have previously competed in the Bangladesh AI Olympiad. Notre Dame College has registered the highest number of participants among individual institutions.

This year's national round will consist of two parts. The first will be a written mathematics examination designed to assess students' mathematical proficiency, a fundamental skill for artificial intelligence.

The second part will be a machine learning competition hosted on Kaggle, one of the world's popular data science platforms. Participants will be required to solve problems using data.

Students who perform well in the national round will advance to subsequent training and team selection stages. The process will assess both theoretical knowledge and practical problem-solving abilities.

Students who perform well in the national round are expected to attend a two-day advanced training workshop organised by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at BRAC University. The tentative dates are November 2 and 3.

A team selection test will then be held on November 6 and 7 at the Institute of Information Technology, University of Dhaka.

Students who pass the final selection process will be nominated to represent Bangladesh at the IAIO in Vietnam, scheduled to begin on February 25, 2027.

Professor Dr B M Mainul Hossain of the Institute of Information Technology at the University of Dhaka is serving as team leader of the Bangladesh AI Olympiad.

Dr Mohammad Azam Khan, Associate Professor in the Department of Computing and Information System at Daffodil International University, is the team's coach. Tasnim Mahfuz Nafis is serving as academic coordinator.

The International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad is an international competition for school and college students. It tests young participants from different countries on their theoretical knowledge and practical skills in artificial intelligence.

Through the national competition, advanced training and final team selection, Bangladesh aims to identify students capable of demonstrating their skills in artificial intelligence and data science on the international stage.
//DBTech/TMS/SMP/MIST//