Daniel Wright

Daniel Wright is a competitive programmer and software engineer. Representing South Africa he won gold and 1st place overall (700/700) at the 1998 IOI; representing the United States in 1999 he took silver (29th). He also made the 1998 IMO South Africa team (honourable mention) and the 1997 team (bronze). He competed on TopCoder as 'dmwright' (member since 2001, two-time TopCoder Open Algorithm Finalist), winning the 2002 Sun/TopCoder Collegiate Challenge and $100,000 as a Stanford junior. He earned an MS in Computer Science at Stanford (1999-2003), worked at Google and IBM, and public profiles list him at Waymo in the Bay Area.

Notes8

• Won the 2002 Sun/TopCoder Collegiate Challenge and its $100,000 prize as a Stanford junior, beating 15 finalists from Caltech, MIT, Georgia Tech and Purdue; had already been hired for a Microsoft summer job a week earlier.Jul 2002
• Switched national representation from South Africa (1998) to the United States (1999), where he took silver at IOI 1999 (29th, 310/600) - he is one of very few people to medal for two different countries.Oct 16, 1999
• Won IOI 1998 gold medal with a perfect 700/700 score for South Africa - 1st place overall among 241 contestants, the only perfect score that year.Sep 12, 1998
• Current professional profile lists software engineering at Waymo with prior roles at Google and IBM, and an MS in Computer Science from Stanford (1999-2003) - the same years as his IOI 1999 US appearance.2024
• Returned as defending champion to the 2003 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, placing 3rd, after taking 2nd at the TopCoder Invitational 2001.Apr 5, 2003
• Also competed in mathematics: IMO 1997 bronze and IMO 1998 honourable mention for South Africa - a rare double threat in informatics and math olympiads.1998
• Co-authored the 'Programming Challenges' appendix (Skiena & Revilla) as the 2002 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge champion, sharing the exception-handling trick he used.2003
• TopCoder member since April 2001 with a peak competitive-programming rating of 2158, based in Millbrae, California; two-time TopCoder Open Algorithm Finalist.Apr 2001
• As a South Africa-based student he attended the 1999 USACO training camp in Colorado as part of the USA IOI delegation, listed then as a senior at St. David's College (South Africa), Lafayette, CO.Oct 1999