An International Coding Competition for School Students

Created an international coding competition for school students, encouraging early exposure to programming, computational thinking, problem-solving and technology-driven learning on a global stage.

Most national innovation programmes start at university, by which point the gap between students who met code early and students who did not is already years wide. This competition moves the starting line: school-age participants, an international field, and problems that reward reasoning over memorised syntax.

Designed around thinking, not tooling

• Language-agnostic problem sets
• Rounds that scale from first-time coders to olympiad level
• Global leaderboard so local schools can benchmark honestly
• Feedback that explains the approach, not just the verdict

Still running

The competition is ongoing and feeds directly into the NOVA pipeline: students who compete at school age arrive on campus already knowing how to ship under a clock.

Every orbit starts with a nova — and most of them start earlier than we think.