FCS News

The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) is an annual competition for junior high and high school students in Canada and the United States. This year, students were competing against 1700 fellow peers. 

NACLO presents language and logic problems is the format of fun puzzles that can be solved by students using analytical reasoning. All of these problems are written, so students do not need a background in linguistics or computer science. 

In January, 22 local students joined the Dalhousie Faculty of Computer Science team to compete at the Goldberg Computer Science Building. All students competed for a chance to participate in the International Linguistic Olympiad. 

Five of the 22 student participants received prizes and certificates for participation at the Dalhousie site in January. A small ceremony took place on April 21 where students were presented with their awards by the Faculty of Computer Science Undergraduate Committee Chair, Dr. Mike McAllister. 

A big congratulations goes to all of this year's Dalhousie NACLO winners:

1st place

Ruining Zhang, Grade 10  
Prize: tablet Samsung Galaxy Tab E
Ruining not only was our local first place winner, she also qualified for the Second Round of NACLO (~10% of participants across North America qualified). 

2nd place

Emma Mclean, Grade 12  
Prize: tablet Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 10''

3rd place

Maria Samman. Grade 11
Prize:  tablet Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 10''

4th place

Ruikang Guo, Grade 12
Prize: Roku 3 streaming player

5th place

Victor Gao, Grade 9
Prize: Roku 3 streaming player

Below Top: Maria Samman (3rd Place), Below Bottom: Victor Gao (5th Place), Missing: Emma Mclean & Ruikang Guo 

The Dalhousie site for NACLO is organized by Dr. Vlado Keselj, Armin Sajadi, Dijana Kosmajac and Magdalena Jankowska and couldn't run without this team!

The contest problems (and solutions) are now available online:
http://www.nacloweb.org/practice.php#previous_problems