The grandson of well-known local Les McDonnell, Declan McDonnell has been selected for the second year running for the Australian Informatics Olympiad team.
A Year 12 student at Normanhurst Boys High School in Sydney, Declan will again compete at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI).
This year’s competition will be in Kazan, Russia, from August 12 to 19.
Twenty-seven of Australia’s brightest student biologists, chemists, computer programmers, physicists, mathematicians and Earth scientists will compete in the event.
They have been selected to represent Australia at the UNESCO-sanctioned International Science and Mathematical Olympiads, 19 of whom are from New South Wales.
Declan has succeeded from an initial pool of more than 150,000 high school students.
The initial students each sat open qualifying exams, including the Australian Science Olympiad Exams and the Australian Mathematics Competition.
Declan’s grandfather Les couldn’t be more proud of his grandson.
“What Declan has been able to achieve at such a young age is truly amazing,” Les said.
“This is his second time representing Australia and he has represented his school on many occasions too.
“Declan has always been exceptionally good at his studies.
“He is very dedicated and deserves these very good results.
“Declan plans to go to university after he finishes school this year to study in computers.
“We could not be more proud of him,” he said.
The Olympians will compete against 2000 of the world’s smartest students at competitions in Vietnam (Biology), Georgia (Chemistry), Japan (Earth Science), Russia (Informatics), Hong Kong (Mathematics) and Switzerland (Physics).
They received their Australian team blazers at a team announcement ceremony at Parliament House, Canberra.
Media personality and maths whiz Adam Spencer attended the ceremony together with one of Australia’s leading mathematics professors, The University of Sydney’s Dr Jacqui Ramagge, parents, teachers, academics, Olympiad alumni and officials.
