From Lahore to Beijing: A Journey of AI Olympiad Glory

From Lahore to Beijing: A Journey of AI Olympiad Glory Earlier this year, Aitchison College gained accreditation from the International Board for the International Olympiad of Artificial Intelligence (IOAI). It designates the college as the national selection body for the Olympiad, positioning it as the only institution in Pakistan to win this unique honour. The International Science Olympiads (ISO) are a series of annual global competitions in various fields of the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. The competitions are intended for the 4-6 top high school students from each participating country. The goals of each ISO are to promote careers in science and to challenge the brightest students worldwide. The International Olympiad of Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) is an international science Olympiad specialising in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Aitchison hosted the Pakistan Olympiad of Artificial Intelligence (POAI) in March 2025 as the national selection process, which assessed students’ knowledge of AI topics such as computer vision. The four highest-scoring students from POAI were chosen, all from different schools and participated in four training camps in the months leading up to the Olympiad. These camps, co-hosted with Skills2Success, offered training in natural language processing, deep learning, computer vision, and machine learning. From 2nd to 9th August 2025, IOAI was held in Beijing, China. Under the able guidance of Deputy Headmaster, Senior School, Dr. Muhammad Kamran, the four-member team represented Pakistan, facing elite competitors from over sixty countries and territories. The students competed in a two-day gruelling individual contest, solving six difficult AI problems. The only Aitchisonian in Team Pakistan, Ayan Bin Rafaih, received an “Honourable Mention” — the first time in Pakistan’s history — and was also the highest scorer from the national team at IOAI. This marks the first time since 2015, over ten years ago, that an Aitchisonian has won at an ISO. We extend our heartiest congratulations to Ayan and the teaching staff with the optimism that they will achieve more in their future endeavours at IOAI 2026.

Stored text