
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.
In 2021, the USACO began training and sending team of top female USA computing students to the European Girls' Olympiad in Informatics (EGOI), where we have continued to show increasingly stronger performance over time. USA teams attending the IOI have also 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 and EGOI team members and the medals they earned at these events.
Past IOI Results:
2024: Alexandria, Egypt




2023: Szeged, Hungary




2022: Yogyakarta, Indonesia




2021: Singapore (online)




2020: Singapore (online)




2019: Baku, Azerbaijan




2018: Tsukuba, Japan




2017: Tehran, Iran

(*) Benjamin Qi
(*) Dhruv Rohatgi
(*) Eric Zhang
2016: Kazan, Russia




2015: Almaty, Kazakhstan




2014: Taipei, Taiwan




2013: Brisbane, Australiia




2012: Sirmione, Italy




2011: Pattaya, Thailand




2010: Waterloo, Canada




2009: Plovdiv, Bulgaria




2008: Cairo, Egypt




2007: Zagreb, Croatia




2006: Mérida, Mexico




2005: Nowy Sacz, Poland




2004: Athens, Greece




2003: Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA




2002: Yong-In, Korean Republic




2001: Tampere, Finland




2000: Beijing, China




1999: Antala-Belek, Turkey




1998: Setúbal, Portugal




1997: Cape Town, South Africa




1996: Veszprém, Hungary




1995: Eindhoven, Netherlands





1994: Haninge, Sweden




1993: Mendoza, Argentina




1992: Bonn, Germany




Past EGOI Results:
2024: Veldhoven, Netherlands




2023: Lund, Sweden




2022: Antalya, Turkey




2021: Switzerland (online)




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