FITIS announces 21st Young Computer Scientists Competition 2022

FITIS Chairman Dr. Prasad Samarasinghe

FITIS Software Chapter President Fairooz Habeeb

The Federation of Information Technology Industry of Sri Lanka (FITIS) has announced the 2022 edition of the Young Computer Scientist (YCS) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), for the 21st time.

This program is modelled based on the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA). The competition aims to expose the ICT talents of schoolchildren at early stages to earn recognition and competency to align with global standards.

FITIS Chairman Dr. Prasad Samarasinghe said that children are the future of our nation, and every effort must be made to provide them with the required resources and facilities to achieve their future goals. Post COVID-19 pandemic showed us the increasing digital divide as students were forced to study from home for their safety and the lack of access to digital services and products. Therefore, the time is now for us all to join hands and work towards reducing this digital gap in Sri Lanka, if we are to provide our children equal opportunities. We must utilise the pandemic as a learning and address these important challenges we are facing, if we are to move forward and enjoy prosperity. We must strive to achieve digital inclusion by ensuring digital access, digital affordability and digital ability. As such, the Young Computer Scientist Competition organised by FITIS is an excellent initiative aimed at developing the IT skills of our future leaders.

FITIS Software Chapter President Fairooz Habeeb said that this year the YCS competition is stepping successfully into the 21st consecutive year as the new normal and using a virtual platform to reach out to the students to enable them to participate without any obstacles. FITIS has organised a few virtual awareness programs (webinars) for IT teachers and IT related authorities of the respective schools and students in order to increase the awareness to compete at the national and international level. The registrations for this year were closed on 31 August and netted over 500 applications. Registered students can submit their projects until 15 September 2022. Judging will take place at UCSC during the month of September under the guidance of UCSC.

The YCS competition aims to expose the computing talents of schoolchildren at early stages and encourage them to develop their talents and earn recognition for their innovations at the international level. This competition is open for four groups of students in different age categories spanning a wide array of fields encompassing Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics and Big Data Analytics. In addition, FITIS has also included a new category ‘Open Category’ to give an opportunity for young talents within the industry which address pertinent challenges within.

The selection process is based on an initial assessment from a panel of judges, followed by a presentation/demonstration by the students and a final judgment is provided by the same panel plus members selected amongst an eminent panel from industry veterans and academia. YCS winners are announced by MoE and the award ceremony is conducted jointly by FITIS and MoE every year. The winners, the school principals and the IT teachers of all the winning schools are invited to the award ceremony and recognised, wherein prizes too are afforded. One overall winner from each age category group of the competition will be nominated for the APICTA (Asia Pacific ICT Alliance) awards that will be held in Islamabad Pakistan in 2022. Further the YCS competition is ably supported by the following technology and media partners – SlashTech, H-One, LunaLabs, Textware, Daily FT and Daily Mirror.

For further information and latest updates follow their Facebook/LinkedIn/Instagram pages (Young Computer Scientist) or visit www.ycs.lk. For further inquiries please email [email protected] or [email protected] or call 0115460460 or 0112577103 during office working hours (9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. on weekdays).