Cutting-edge technology meets the ancient pyramids of Egypt.  It’s what happened when Neal Wu, a junior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, won 10th place at the 20th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).

Wu was a member of the USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) team facing other computer programming team competitors representing 70 countries in Cairo late in the summer.  He placed 10th at the top level individually out of a grand total of 300 competitors and received a gold medal.  Only 25 gold, 50 silver and 75 bronze medals were awarded.  Only about half of all the competitors received any medal at all.

In total, the USA team received two gold and two silver medals for individual efforts.  The son of Mei Wu and Guorong Zhang, Wu was the only USA team member from Louisiana.  The others were from Indiana and Virginia.  Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing and the engineering of information systems. 

Wu, who had only been out of the country during a visit to China when he was 1, was excited to get a free trip to Egypt.  He even got to visit The Great Pyramid and enter a small area of it for a brief period of time.  “This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Wu said.  Next year, the competition is in Bulgaria.  Wu will be eligible for that international competition and one more after that.

The 2008 USA team was selected from a field of 15 high school students during the US Open held earlier this year.  USACO, which is sponsored by USENIX, IBM and ITA Software, organized the event.

Wu is no stranger to winning similar awards.  In February, he won second place out of 49 computer programming finalists from around the world in the Top Coder High School Tournament.  He competed against competitors representing 15 countries and won a $10,000 scholarship. 

Currently, Wu has a 4.7 grade point average and attends several Honors and Advanced Placement classes at Baton Rouge Magnet High School.  He is a member of the Interact Club, a community service organization, as well as the Mu Alpha Theta (math) Club and the Computer Science Club.  Upon completing high school, he plans to attend MIT or Harvard.