UWr Institute of Computer Science hosts world’s most important programming competition
Once again, the UWr Institute of Computer Science will be the organiser of the ICPC Central Europe Regional Contest. From 13 to 15 December, our university will host seventy three-person teams consisting of programming enthusiasts from top universities in Central Europe, who will face complex algorithmic tasks.
From the US to around the world
The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is an algorithmic programming contest for university students, whose history dates back to the 1970s and began in the US. The initiative quickly spread in this country and in Canada, and then around the world as an innovative program to improve the algorithmic problem-solving skills of the brightest students in computer science. Currently, 70,000 students from 3,000 universities participate in the competition each year, competing first in preliminaries at the local and regional levels and then in the world finals.
Organised by universities with the right know-how
The Institute of Computer Science at the University of Wrocław is organising this year’s regional stage – ICPC CERC, the Central European Championships. UWr is hosting the event for the fourth time, having previously organised the competition consecutively in 2008- 2010. – There are few universities in the Central European region with the necessary know-how to undertake the organisation of such a prestigious championship – comments dr Paweł Gawrychowski, prof. UWr from the Institute of Computer Science responsible for organising the competition. The University of Wrocław is one of the three academic centers in Poland, in addition to Jagiellonian University and Warsaw University, which sends the most teams to the competition.
The competition in Wrocław will feature 70 teams, including as many as 29 teams from Poland. In addition to our country’s representatives, students from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will participate in ICPC CERC.
Participant registration and a job fair will be held on 13 December. The next day, teams will have the opportunity to participate in lectures and a trial competition. The actual competition will be held on 15 December. A detailed schedule is available on the iCPC CERC championship website.
Between 11 and 13 of them are expected to advance to the next stage, the Regional Championships Europe, to be held in February/March 2025. The next step will already be the world final.
Contest formula: creativity and time counts
Each team participating in CERC consists of three players representing a particular higher education institution, supervised by a coach – usually a member of the academic staff. Teams aim to solve as many as possible of a minimum of ten tasks prepared by the organisers, which are real programming problems. The problem is solved when it is accepted by the judges. Teams are ranked according to the number of tasks solved, and if any of them solve the same number of tasks, they will be ranked according to the total time consumed in solving each problem.
The time consumed in solving a problem is the time elapsed between the start of the contest and the submission of an accepted solution to that problem plus a 20-minute penalty for each rejected solution to a problem, regardless of the submission time. Each team has only one computer at its disposal.
Success is algorithmic knowledge and effective communication
– In name, this is a programming competition, but the tasks solved are mathematical and algorithmic in nature. Accordingly, participants must demonstrate precise reasoning, algorithmic knowledge, as well as the ability to efficiently implement their solutions – explains dr Paweł Gawrychowski – In addition, teamwork skills are necessary: effective communication and complementing each other’s weaknesses. Dr Gawrychowski offers advice drawn from his own experience: in 2005, he and two other participants won 5th place and a silver medal at the ICPC Finals in Shanghai.
Teams from UWr regulars at IPCP championship finals
The University of Wrocław has been participating in the IPCP CERC since 1998, and we made it to the world finals for the first time in 2005. Since then, the teams from UWr have actually been regular participants in the finals of the championship, having won medal places several times.
You can read more about the achievements of the UWr teams here.
Added by: 5.12.2024
Complied by E.K.
