The 23rd year of IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics) was held in Pattaya, Thailand from July 22 to 29. Two members of the French team, supported by EPITA, were awarded with medals.

Paul Kirchner, a secondary school student in his final year, who had already won two bronze medals in previous years, was ranked ninth and won a gold medal for France. Jules Pondard, a secondary school student in his fifth year, was ranked 114th and won a bronze medal. France thus secured its second gold medal at the IOI since the debut of the event in 1996. The last gold medal won for France was secured by Mehdi Bouaziz in 2005, with a similar ranking. In addition to these two gold medals, France has already collected a total of five silver and twenty bronze medals.

Paul Kirchner in yellow, Jules Pondard in white, Mathias Hiron in azure

EPITA, the school involved in the competition

Every year - for about one week, around 80 participating countries in the IOI are represented by four students (under 19 years of age) from each participating country. Every participant must solve problems of algorithmic nature in five hours during two events that make up the competition. EPITA has been supporting team France via the France-IOI association, by hosting the French competition (April 30 - May 1), and by allowing the winners to get training in its premises as well as sponsoring their travel.

Training by France IOI at EPITA

"The training for the final competition allowed me to gain more speed and agility in solving problems", said Paul Kirchner. "Algorithms and algebra are a passion for me. I started feeling bored during my final year at secondary school, and thus went on to discover the program of first year preparatory classes and worked to solve difficult computational exercises. I also participated in the competition Prologin, during which I got second place this year. I am now going to enter the first year of "Maths-Physics-Engineering Sciences" (MPSI) at Lycee Louis-le-Grand, and I am aiming to enter the Ecole Normale Supérieure d'Ulm to continue my studies in research."

Intensive training with the France IOI

For Mathias Hiron, President of France IOI, "participants at the World Finals are usually bright students, computer enthusiasts who pursue their careers in academic research or in big companies such as Google, Facebook or Microsoft after passing through the Ecole Normale Supérieure or EPITA. "

A glimpse of the France IOI website

Students participating in this challenging competition were trained regularly on the web-site of France IOI, which offers free exercises on IT and algorithms. With 10 years of existence, there are a total of 10,000 registered users and 500 visitors per day. After the publication of a new version of the website this summer there was a significant increase in its attendance: more than 17,000 exercise solutions just during the month of August. Mathias Hiron wants to gradually internationalize the website. At the moment it is available only in French, but soon it will be made available in Spanish, German, Lithuanian and other languages.

IOI as a gateway to the future

One of the four participants of the French team, George-Axel Jaloyan, a 15 year old secondary school student, said: "I found the site while solving programming problems (in my case C). Then I started algorithmic exercises, and I was not able to stop afterwards. I discovered a whole community via France-IOI internships. I learnt a lot from this and it was totally rewarding for me. Algorithms are not taught in the traditional curriculum, France-IOI was the cord that connected me to this area. I learned a new way to code, a way to solve algorithmic problems and, more generally - the art of using a research method for a given problem. "

Candidates at work during the IOI in Pattaya

"The benefits of this training were almost immediate - after the first training from IOI France, my math average increased by 2 points, and my ability to find solutions to math problems increased significantly. The IOI represents success of several years of work. This competition opens many doors and will enrich my CV as well as my personal experience. Moreover I feel honored to represent France in an international competition. "

For more information log on to the website of the France IOI: www.france-ioi.org

A toolbox with augmented reality applications for mobile devices to assist tourists before, during and after their visit:

The project « eTourism Augmented Reality », has been chosen among over 70 candidates as one of the 18 winners of the first call for proposals «Scanning technologies and enhancement of cultural, scientific and educational content » within the framework of the Investment Program for the Future launched by the French government.

This project, planned for 30 months, has a global budget of 7 millions of Euros. The consortium involves two project leaders -- i-Marginal [http://www.imarginal.com/] and CEA-List [http://www-list.cea.fr/ ] --, three start-ups -- LTU [http://www.ltutech.com/], DiotaSoft [http://www.diotasoft.com/] and XediX [http://www.xedix.eu/] -- several research partners -- i-Matériel.Lab [http://imateriel.eu/], Institute for Research and Innovation (IRI) [http://www.iri.centrepompidou.fr/] and LRDE (EPITA) [http://www.lrde.epita.fr] --, and institutional partners such as AtoutFrance [http://www.atout-france.fr], Centre Pompidou [http://www.centrepompidou.fr], La Cinémathèque Française [http://www.cinematheque.fr], Issy Media [http://www.issy.com] and Villa Arson [http://www.villa-arson.org].

« eTourism Augmented Reality » aims at inventing intelligent augmented reality dedicated to tourism and cultural heritage.

The goal is to design optimized programs for smart phones and touch pads that provide access to enhanced digital content and allow interaction in real time by using navigation avatars, intelligent 3D object recognition, contextualized data superimposed on the real environment, connection with smart objects... Many solutions helping to guide us, inform us, entertain us, and assist us in various fields of our daily life, particularly designed for tourism and cultural activities.

Thanks to a single platform, users of this intelligent augmented reality tool will be able to combine object recognition of art work and architecture, 2D and 3D image registration, analysis of text bodies, overlay of interactive navigation avatars, precise geolocation, indoor and outdoor navigation, text translation in real time...

The role of the LRDE within this project is to carry out automatic extraction of text in images on mobile devices. The aim is to use semantic information that has been extracted in order to enhance the data transmitted to the user, either by translating or by completing them. The user can, for example, take a picture of a work of art in a museum with his mobile phone. The application will then extract automatically the name and the description from the image in order to translate the text into the user's language and offer him links to more information on the work. This system will work in spite of the variety of types of the texts (size, font, color,...) and within a reasonable time for a mobile device (low-power, limited memory, ...).

Four members of the "robotics" association of EPITA, IPSA and Epitech went to the MIT where they attended the IDC Robocon event.

For two weeks, from July 25 to August 5, Benoît Reitz (EPITA), Philippe Chassagnard (EPITA), Thomas Bacoup (IPSA) and Sébastien Patour (IPSA) participated in the buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States at IDC Robocon. During the 22nd year of the event, Benoît Reitz's team came third.

A competition of endurance in a mythical place

IDC Robocon is an international competition organized by a consortium of the most prestigious universities and schools in the world, in which students from eight countries form joint teams competing under identical conditions of hardware and equipment. During these two very intense weeks the candidates housed in student residences at MIT have barely time to breathe. The program is tough: breakfast at 7 am, conference at 8 am on the problems encountered during the previous day, and team work from 9 am to 11 pm, with only two breaks for meals. They have only Sunday to visit the corners of this famous place.

International Collaboration

For Philippe Chassagnard: "One of the major difficulties of the IDC Robocon is communication. Each of us is placed in a team where he does not know the other members. But we must work with them effectively despite linguistic and cultural barriers. In my team, we did not all work the same way and we had mixed knowledge. We had to overcome these difficulties to build a robot that could stand out. If we were not able to impose ourselves, it is because of operational errors. "

It is ultimately the strategy of Benoît Reitz's team that paid off: "Our robot was not the most efficient. But our tactic was to keep preventing our opponents to score points. "

Continuing in robotics

If the primary purpose of Evolutek is to prepare its members for the Coupe de France of robotics, in which the association came fifth last year, IDC Robocon has specificities that make this event very useful for students. "During these two weeks, various sessions were held to upgrade the participants on a particular aspect of robotics, said Olivier Widar, the head of the association. For example they might not have had training on the Arduino programming, which is used to control the robot and different types of sensors."

Throughout the year, members of Evolutek from EPITA, IPSA and Epitech (all schools of IONIS Group) come together to work on the robot that they will represent to compete at the Coupe de France. Thomas Bacoup, a student at IPSA, extols the virtues of teamwork: "The tasks are divided into three areas: mechanics (mainly IPSA), Information Technology (EPITA and Epitech) and finally Electronics (the 3 schools)". This is an opportunity for students to share their skills and gain a real versatility needed in robotics.

There is no specialized school of robotics in France. A number of students who go through Evolutek then choose to continue in the field, either by integrating in research laboratories or by joining specialized companies. Two former members of the association - Pierre-Yves Vachot (IPSA - 2010) and Stanislav Rudico (IPSA - 2010) have worked at Aldebaran Robotics. At EPITA, the specialization "Software Engineering and Real-time Systems" and "Cognitive Science and Advanced Computing" potentially lead to robotics. The area of ​​armaments in France is the closest to the field of robotics and provides bright career prospects, notably at institutions like the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) and companies such as Safran and MBDA.

EPITA International Master, proudly presents the first edition of its EPITA International Master Scholarship for Excellence Program.  This launching batch is made available to all admitted students for the Winter 2012 cohort.

From March 2012 three stipends will be up for grabs on a merits' base selection for the following:

1^st Prize: €3,000

2^nd Prize: €2,000

3^rd Prize: €1,000

[As the Winter 2012 application deadline is fast approcahing, make sure you apply by December 30th to be able, once admitted, to apply to EPITA International Master Scholarship for Excellence Program. 

Questions, comments write to sfe@epita.fr ]

Over 33 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus. In France, each year more than 6,500 people come to know of their HIV positivity.

For the fifth consecutive year, schools under IONIS Education Group are mobilized on the eve of the World Day of Fight Against HIV / AIDS observed on December 1st since 1995.

During this occasion, schools covered various topics related to the virus such as information, risk awareness, prevention, disease progression and treatment or taking care of the sick.

Each institution of IONIS Education Group stepped-in in its own way by organizing lectures, screening films, collection stalls for associations fighting against AIDS (Sidaction, AIDES, or AIDS Info Services).