Lior Goldberg from Rehovot won first place in a competition to encourage youth to excel in computers

This is the Kodagoro competition that has been held for the tenth year at the Weizmann Institute * Not long ago, the Kodagoro Extreme competition was also held

Lior Goldberg, 18, from Rehovot, won first place in the annual competition to encourage excellence in computers among teenagers - CodeGuru, which was held for the tenth year. It is worth noting that this is Lior Goldberg's second win. Last year he won second place in this competition.

The competition is held under the auspices of IBM, Eldin, the IDF ICT Division, the Ministry of Education, the School of Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, the Young People in Science Unit - CMD - of the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Association of Veterans of the Central Collection Unit.

The competition was attended by dozens of teenagers who advanced to the final stage after a preliminary screening in the competition held online. The participants competed in a series of simultaneous tests, in mathematical thinking, original problem solving and programming ability.

Mezi Glaur, IBM's vice president of marketing, stated at the ceremony that "the high-tech industry is the engine that enables growth in the economy, and therefore we are working on investing and cultivating interest and excellence among youth who will be a reserve for this important industry."

This year, in which the tenth anniversary of the competition was marked, the achievements of the winners of the competition over the years were presented, 8 students who graduated from the competition were employed by companies sponsoring CODE GURU, some of them are still employed.

The first prize: a ThinkPad laptop donated by IBM was won, as mentioned, by Lior Goldberg from Rehovot.

The second prize, a ThinkCenter desktop computer, was won by Daniel Yosov from Rishon Lezion and the third prize, a modern printer, was won by Yaakov Galka from Herzliya.

Another competition of Kudguru / Kudguru Extreme.

And in the meantime, the Weizmann Institute magazine reports that the virtual survival competition, "Kodagoro Extreme", was recently held at the Davidson Institute for Science Education. Eight teams participated in the final, competing for control of a virtual "deserted island". For this purpose, the competitors created "survival" computer programs, which use sophisticated tactics to attack the other programs and destroy them, and at the same time - to evade the opponents' attacks. The programs also had to deal with challenges implanted by the creators of the competition: "smart bombs" and "zombies" that roamed the arena.

The first prize - half-tuition scholarships for a bachelor's degree in computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and a financial grant, a gift from the General Security Service - was awarded to teams from Rashish schools in Hod Hasharon and Ahad Ha'am in Petah Tikva. Two additional competitors, Natan Yelin from Ostrovsky High School in Ra'anana who won second place, and Or Barzilai from Rashonim School in Herzliya who won third place, received cash prizes. The Kodagoro Extreme competition is a joint initiative of the Davidson Institute for Science Education, the high-tech companies "Aladdin" and IBM, the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, the Association of Veterans of Unit 8200 of the Intelligence Corps, the IDF Intelligence Division, the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Education. In the competition, the ability to think mathematically, deal with problems, originality, creativity and flexibility are tested. It is carried out in several rounds, so that the participants are given the opportunity to learn the weaknesses and strengths of the competitors, and improve their software accordingly.