The first edition of the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI), founded by five Bulgarians, will kick off on 10th of August. Nearly 200 students from around 40 countries will gather in Burgas, Bulgaria, to show their knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence at the inaugural International Olympiad in AI. IOAI 2024 is under the patronage of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria. International scientists from leading universities are involved in the creation of the tasks. IOAI partners and sponsors include institutions, NGOs, and companies from around the globe, with Google being the platinum sponsor. Over an exciting week from August 9th to 15th, students, leaders, and scientists will launch an olympiad combining scientific and practical tasks. The goal of the olympiad is to challenge participants to think critically, accumulate theoretical and practical knowledge. They will also provide an objective perspective on the vast opportunities in this field while addressing the moral and ethical questions associated with AI.
Format
IOAI will be held annually in different countries, similar to other international STEM olympiads. It is a team competition – each IOAI team consists of four students, supported by one leader, who work on the olympiad topics weeks before IOAI. During preparation, the team has access to all resources, but on-site, they rely on a laptop, internet access and, of course, AI.
The competition consists of two segments: scientific and practical. The scientific round aims to develop better specialists and experts who will work with the technology in the future. This year, it focuses on machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Each team receives identical resources and has several weeks to shape their solution to complex theoretical and practical tasks. During the competition, tasks are expanded and specified to ensure that participants can work independently.
The practical round is creatively designed to pay tribute to the current host country, Bulgaria as well as setting the scene for future hosts. It is colorful and fun, with students creating a widely understandable product (audio, video, images). Teams will work with existing AI applications and demonstrate the boundaries science has reached. In the future, the practical round will showcase the evolution of AI in the field of art.
IOAI 2024 also includes a conference. For one day, teams and guests of the olympiad will have the opportunity to hear exciting lectures and participate in practical sessions on current topics in artificial intelligence.
The scientific committee and jury of the olympiad include scientists from around the world. The chairperson is Yova Kemenchedzhieva, an associate professor in natural language processing (NLP) at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. Yova holds a PhD from the renowned Coastal Lab at the University of Copenhagen. She works at the intersection of language and vision, developing models for generating text from images and multimodal extraction through mentoring young researchers and collaborating with colleagues worldwide.
IOAI 2024 special participant is Maria Ilieva, one of the most successful female vocal performers on the contemporary Bulgarian music scene. Together with Maria, IOIA will draw public attention to the accessibility, widespread application, and moral questions surrounding artificial intelligence.
Founders
The olympiad is founded by the LERAI Foundation of five Bulgarians: Lora, Elena, Rosi, Alex, and Iva.
- Lora Dineva is dedicated to education development with over ten years of experience organizing national linguistic events, including preparing teams and hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics and is currently pursuing a master’s in artificial intelligence for business and finance. Professionally, Lora applies AI to improve efficiency and innovation in the government and financial sectors.
- Elena Marinova has a 25-year career in the IT sector as a co-founder of Musala Soft, now part of the IT business of the KKCG group. She is a leader in business excellence, innovation, and STEM education development. Elena is on the boards of companies, IT associations, and NGOs. As a public figure, she speaks and writes about leadership, technological trends, innovation, and education. Elena holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in strategic management. She is the co-founder of the oldest private programming competition, CodeIT.bg (2000), and the European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI, 2017).
- Rositsa Dekova is an associate professor at the University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Her passion for linguistics began in high school when she won national computer linguistics competitions. This passion continues in her academic and research career. Rositsa holds two master’s degrees in linguistics and software engineering from the University of Plovdiv and a PhD in linguistics from NTNU, Trondheim. Over the years, she has actively participated in organizing linguistics and computational linguistics competitions and conferences. She is a member of the organizing committee for two international linguistics olympiads (2015, 2023).
- Aleksandar Velinov became interested in scientific competitions in school and won the national linguistics competition in the 12th grade. As a student, he began teaching linguistics and has been leading classes in all major schools in Sofia for over 20 years. Alex works in the IT sector but maintains his hobby, leading the Bulgarian national team almost continuously since the first International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) in 2003. Alex has organized IOL twice (2015, 2023) as chairman and has been a member of the IOL international board since 2015.
- Iva Gumnishka is a former competitor and gold medalist in mathematical linguistics from IOL. She is the founder of Humans in the Loop, a social enterprise processing data for artificial intelligence, and a board member of ForHumanity, which works in the field of AI system auditing.
