Bangladesh won three gold medals at the 1st Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Olympiad, making a strong debut in the region’s premier competition for young artificial intelligence talent.
Three Bangladeshi students won gold medals after competing against 129 contestants from 18 countries including China, Russia, Singapore, Japan and Iran. Of the 10 gold medals awarded at the Olympics, Bangladesh won three. This is the highest number among participating countries.
The gold medalist is Rabib Shahriar, a class 10 student of Homna Adarsha High School. Md Saiduzzaman Araf, 11th grade student of Moulvibazar Public University. and Tridib Roy Arjo, an 11th grade student at the University of Notre Dame, Dhaka.
The final rankings were 4th, 5th, and 9th, respectively.
Four other members of the Bangladesh team received honorable mention. They are Naufir Rahman, a class 8 student of Darus Salaam Public Secondary School; Naira Nawal Ahmed, a student of class 11 of Ideal School and College, Motiheel. Anonyo Zarif Akando, 11th grade student at Munnu International School and College. Mobtasim Chaudhry Priom, an 11th grade student at the University of Notre Dame, Dhaka.
Another member of the Bangladesh team, Murtaza Abdullah, a class 10 student of National Ideal School, also performed well throughout the competition.
The eight-member Bangladeshi team, like participants from other countries, participated in the international competition online from Dhaka University’s Institute of Information Technology on June 13 with live video supervision and screen recording.
The six-hour competition started at noon Bangladesh time and lasted until 6pm. Contestants solved four separate machine learning problems on the Bohrium platform.
The competition questions have been made public by the organizing committee and participants can attempt them until July 31st.
Regarding his reaction after winning the gold medal, Rabib Shahriar said, “When I saw ‘Rabib Shahriar – Gold medal’ written next to my name on the results list, for a moment I felt like the happiest person in the world.”
He said he was expecting a medal based on his position during the competition, but it was an extraordinary moment for Bangladesh to win the gold medal at the 1st Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Olympics.
“This achievement was made possible thanks to the cooperation of many people. We are deeply grateful to the Bangladesh Open Source Network, the Bangladesh Artificial Intelligence Olympic Committee and the APOAI Organizing Committee for making this possible,” he said.
Gold medalist MD Saiduzzaman Araf said winning himself was never the biggest issue, but representing the country changed the meaning of the competition.
“When I saw the word ‘gold’ next to my name on the official scoreboard and the map of Bangladesh, I felt really special. This victory is not just for me, but for Bangladesh,” he said.
Another gold medalist, Tridib Roy Arjo, said he was happy to win the gold medal at the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Olympics and was proud to defend the honor of his country.
Munir Hasan, chairman of Bangladesh Open Source Network, said this achievement was a historic moment for Bangladesh.
“No other country in the Asia-Pacific region won more than two gold medals, but only our students won three gold medals. This is a matter of great pride and joy for us,” he said.
He also praised the Bangladesh Open Source Network team for successfully organizing the national process despite various constraints and congratulated the winners.
Dr. BM Mainul Hossain, leader of the Bangladesh team and professor at the School of Information Technology, Dhaka University, said the results were very encouraging.
“This is not just our achievement, but a strong statement of Bangladesh’s intellectual presence to the world,” he said.
He said organizers will continue to organize artificial intelligence training and competitions for students and the next generation.
Dr Mohammad Azam Khan, Bangladesh team coach and associate professor at Daffodil International University, said the result was about national pride.
He said this achievement reflects the students’ hard work, courage, perseverance and determination to represent Bangladesh at the highest level.
“Through regional and national rounds, training camps, and intensive practice, the eight talented students demonstrated extraordinary dedication and problem-solving skills. We did more than just participate in a competition; we represented the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities of Bangladeshi youth on the world stage,” he said.
Tasnim Mahfuz Nafis, academic coordinator of the Bangladesh team, said the team’s performance was impressive in all areas of the competition.
She said the four questions in this year’s Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Olympiad include agriculture, speech processing, wildlife image analysis and chemistry.
“No matter what field a high school or college student dreams of working in, skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning can help them stay ahead of the curve, because creating new knowledge in any field requires working with large amounts of data,” she said.
He added that students can now learn basic Python and actually start learning machine learning by using platforms like Kaggle. This opportunity was not easily available even 10 years ago.
The Bangladesh team was selected by the Bangladesh Open Source Network, the organizer of the Bangladesh Artificial Intelligence Olympics, after a three-month selection process and evaluation at a national selection camp held from May 20 to 23.
Bangladesh Open Source Network was the main organizer and operator of the national initiative. Bangladesh University of Commerce and Industry was the platinum sponsor and national round organizer and Reve Chat was the powered Dubai partner.
Brain Station 23 was the gold sponsor, Million X Bangladesh and Creative IT were the silver sponsors, Bitna was the bronze sponsor and Dhaka University Institute of Information Technology was the knowledge partner.
Deepto TV was the television partner, Bangladesh Science Popularization Society, Rokomari.com and Jadu PC were other partners.
Organizers said this achievement will bring new possibilities to the artificial intelligence and information technology field in Bangladesh and encourage school-level students to build basic skills in artificial intelligence.
