Bangladeshi teenagers win 10 medals

Bangladeshi teenagers won 10 medals in the International Robot Olympiad in Thailand on Friday of which one was gold, two silver, six bronze and one technical. 

At the last year’s event in the Philippines, Bangladesh team won one gold, one technical and two highly commended medals.

This year’s gold medal was jointly won by Abrar Shahid of Chattogram Cantonment Public College and Mir Umaima Hoque of Nalonda High School in a creative category, says a statement from Bangladesh Robot Olympiad.

Rafihath Saleh Chowdhury of Jalalabad Cantonment English School won one silver medal while Nasheetat Zainah Rahman of Sunbeams School and Quazi Mostahid Labib of Chittagong Grammar School Dhaka jointly attained the other. Mustafa Jabbar, minister for posts, telecommunications and information technology, and senior officials of the ICT division greeted the team’s achievements.

Lafifa Jamal, a professor at the Department of Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering in the University of Dhaka, led the 15-member Bangladesh squad.

Expressing satisfaction she said, “This year we have taken huge preparation and medals are the outcomes of that homework.”

This is the second time the country’s teenagers participated in the contest and Lafifa believes that in the coming days Bangladesh would do better.

The contest took place from December 16 to 20 in Chiang Mai and the Bangladesh team returned home yesterday. The ICT Division, bKash and Rupali Bank sponsored the team.

The team’s formation started off with activation programmes organised by Bangladesh Robot Olympiad at 50 educational institutions of 25 districts which were attended by around 4,000 students.

It was followed by a national event where 379 students contested from 136 educational institutions in 21 districts. The top performers were then selected to form the team.