The 46th and 47th Annual ICPC World Finals, hosted by The Arab Academy of Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), will be held in Luxor, Egypt, from 14 to 19 April.
ICPC World Finals Team 2022 (7 Halim: Yehezkiel Raymundo Theodoroes, Edbert Geraldy Cangdinata and Lim Li) and Team 2023 (The Spiders from Mars: Vu Hoang Kien, Nyamdavaa Amar and Jeffrey Lee Chun Hean) with Dr Halim and Prof Tan
The 45th International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 6 to 11 Nov 2022. It was hosted by the University of Asia Pacific.
The ICPC is an algorithmic programming contest, where the best brains compete annually. It’s a real Olympic Games for university students and postgraduates, whose teams compete in terms of speed, creativity and innovation in solving problems.
The delay in this ICPC World Finals 2021 contest is due to covid-19 pandemic.
From left to right, NUS Computing senior lecturer and ICPC coach Dr Steven Halim with the winning team of the ICPC Jakarta Regional Contest, Team 7 Halim: Final-year Computer Science student Yehezkiel Raymundo Theodoroes, final-year Computer Science & Applied Mathematics student Lim Li, and Computer Science freshman Edbert Geraldy Cangdinata.
Team 7 Halim, Team That Time Our Solution Got Hacked, and Team Send Bobs to Alice, won first, second and third place respectively.
A total of 10 NUS teams participated in the contest from 20 to 21 November, with seven NUS teams placing among the top 12.
“I am proud of the teams’ excellent performances,” said Dr Steven Halim, senior lecturer at NUS Computing and the ICPC coach for the NUS teams. “We are blessed to have several strong teams competing for NUS.”
The ICPC contest is the world’s oldest and most established algorithmic programming contest for university students. Teams of three students race to solve as many of the algorithmic problems presented. Subsequently, top scoring teams from the ICPC regional contests will compete in the contest’s annual global championship round – the ICPC World Finals.
Winning team Team 7 Halim solved nine out of 13 problems during the contest. Comprising two final-year students, Yehezkiel Raymundo Theodoroes (Computer Science) and Lim Li (Computer Science & Applied Mathematics), as well as freshman Edbert Geraldy Cangdinata (Computer Science), the trio managed to pull ahead by being the first team to solve problem K in the second hour of the contest. Most teams did not solve problem K at all, or only managed to do so much later into the contest.
Team 7 Halim confessed that they initially did not have high expectations for their performance.
“We had a small talk before the competition about what we want to achieve and set our goal for a bronze medal in the top 12 positions,” said Theodoroes.
Added Lim: “I was definitely quite rusty, as I had not practised competitive programming for a while, and was also busy studying for exams as the ICPC was during our exam period. The contest was quite fun as there were many interesting questions, and I am quite happy with our results.”
Cangdinata accepted Theodoroes and Lim’s invitation to complete the team, as he simply wanted to “have fun together in ICPC, regardless of the outcome”.
“This was the first ICPC I have ever participated in, so it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Personally, I found the aspect of being in a team to be more fun than I expected and showed me a new aspect of competitive programming I haven’t explored prior to this. During the contest, it was nice to be able to discuss with someone else about a certain idea you have because it resulted in us being able to build on our knowledge and come up with a solution together,” said Cangdinata.
The team members tapped on their different strengths to complement each other.
“As the seniors in the team, Lim Li and I had more experience competing in ICPC, and are usually interested in different problem categories. Meanwhile, Edbert brings a new perspective to the team as he is more familiar with the latest algorithms and data structures,” explained Theodoroes on behalf of the team.
“Throughout the five hour competition, we also managed our stamina carefully. We switched coders frequently, we ate snacks to make sure we had energy, and we went to the toilet once in a while for a little walk and inspiration,” He added.
As the winner of the contest and the best performing NUS team, Team 7 Halim will represent NUS at the ICPC World Finals 2022. The 2022 Finals will likely take place in 2023 due to delays.
“By 2023, two of the three members would have graduated from university. This will pose a huge logistical challenge when it comes to team trainings, but we will find a way to make it work when the time comes,” said Dr Halim.
Forging ahead despite obstacles
Rama Aryasuta Pangestu (left) and Nicholas Patrick (right) at the online ICPC Jakarta Regional Contest.
Team That Time Our Solution Got Hacked were faced with multiple obstacles at the beginning of the contest, but this did not deter them from going all out in the contest.
The team initially comprised Computer Science freshmen Nicholas Patrick, Rama Aryasuta Pangestu, and Udit Sanghi. However, due to the travel restriction measures imposed and a mishap, Sanghi was unable to join the team for the competition.
Despite having to compete with only two members instead of three, and this being their first time participating in the ICPC regionals, Patrick and Pangestu went on to clinch second place in the contest.
“We were not used to the ICPC contest setting as the contests each of us usually take part in are individual contests. Moreover, we were underprepared for onsite ICPC rules because we practiced online with one computer per member, as opposed to one computer per team. In our practice, when we need a long algorithm, we can utilise online resources, whereas during the contest, we have to retype our algorithms we prepared before the contest,” added Patrick on behalf of the team.
“We were happy we could achieve this, especially considering one of our team members could not join. We hope to do even better next year, and make it to the world finals. We still have plenty of things to learn and mistakes to fix,” said Patrick.
“We’d like to thank Dr Steven Halim for the chance to participate in weekly contests as practice. We would also like to give huge thanks to Dr Halim and Prof Tan Sun Teck for providing us with tons of snacks before, during, and after the contest,”
Final hallelujah
Members of Team Send Bobs to Alice, (from left to right) Tan Phat Tran, Quang Tuan Le, and Hong Duc Bui, waiting for the ICPC Jakarta Regional Contest to begin online.
Team Send Bobs to Alice capitalised on their strengths in solving problems involving data structures to finish third in the contest.
The team consisted of final-year Computer Science students Tan Phat Tran, Quang Tuan Le and Computer Science freshman Hong Duc Bui, all of whom have participated in previous editions of the ICPC.
“The results are not as good as what we want, however, we are satisfied with it,” said Tran. “We were able to solve our first seven problems quite quickly. However, we got stuck on our eighth and ninth problems and other teams caught up to us,”
Tran and Le both won the 2019 ICPC Asia Jakarta Regional Contest, and this year’s third place win marks their last ICPC contest before they graduate. Teammate Bui hopes to form a new team and qualify for next year’s ICPC World Finals.
The trio expressed their gratitude to ICPC coach Dr Halim, as well as the organisers and sponsors for this opportunity.
Team 7 Halim (comprising Lim Li Y4, Yehezkiel Raymundo Theodoroes Y4 and Edbert Geraldy Cangdinata Y1) won the ticket to the 2022 ACM ICPC World Finals, which will be held in March 2023.
The Closing Ceremony and Winner Announcement is to be held at 8.30 pm Singapore time, 21 November, via this zoom link
From left: Dr Steven Halim, Yehezkiel, Lim Li, Edbert
The 2019 ICPC Asia Manila Regional Programming Contest will be held from 14 - 15 December in Manila, Philippines. It is hosted by Ateno de Manila University.
The 5-hr contest will commence at 1000 hrs local time (same as Singapore time), on 15 December.
NUS has sent 2 teams:
3Sophonomore: Robin Yu, Kwee Lung Sin, Sergio Vierig
7 Halim: Steven Wijaya, Yehezkiel Raymundo, Lim Li
Check live scoreboard here (will freeze at 1 hr before contest ends)
Team 7 Halim came in 1st. Each contestant won an Acer notebook and 3 google duffle bags (for each First Solved)
With NUS staff-in-charge, Mr Akshay Narayan (right). Robin is already in Manila.
The Northwestern Europe Regional Contest (NWERC) is a contest in which teams from universities all over the Northwestern part of Europe are served a series of algorithmic problems. The goal of each team is to solve as many problems as possible within the 5 hour time limit. Potential solutions are submitted and corrected by an automated judging system. The team that solves the most problems at the end of the contest qualify for the ICPC World Finals 2020.
NWERC 2019 is held in Eindhoven, Netherlands, from 15 - 17 November.
Cambridge has sent the following 3 teams to NWERC 2019:
Treeniceratops
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Treevial (Lim Jeck, Choong Yin and Zoltan are in this team)
#1 Cafe Mountain, Seoul National University
#2 UT a.k.a. Is, University of Tokyo
#3 Kokushi_Muso, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
#4 3body3, National University of Singapore
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#17 7 Halim, National University of Singapore
TRINITY STUDENTS SWEEP THE BOARD AT NATIONAL COMPUTER PROGRAMMING CONTEST
PUBLISHED DATE: October 25, 2019
Teams of Trinity computer science and maths students swept the board at the UK and Ireland Programming Contest (UKIEPC) 2019, in which Cambridge took nine out of the top 12 spots.
Trinity’s Treeniceratops team, which comprised Kacper Walentynowicz, Maja Trela and David Wärn, came first and was the only team in the competition to solve every problem. With a slightly different team make-up and name (Triniceratops) they also came first in 2018.
Team Treeniceratops hard at work
More than 150 teams participated in UKIEPC 2019 on Saturday 19 October. The event took place in various locations around the UK and Ireland, including Cambridge where it was hosted at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. The competition is a qualifying round for the Northwestern Europe Programming Contest (NWERC), which will be held in Eindhoven, Holland in November 2019.
Team ?‽!, with Trinity undergraduates Dušan Živanović and Vladimir Milenković and former Trinity undergraduate Dimitrije Erdeljan, now a PhD student at King’s, took second place.
Team Treevial, comprised of Trinity students Jeck Lim, Zoltán Molnár Sáska and Choong Yin Howe, came third.
UKIEPC and NWERC are part of the International Collegiate Programming Contest, which are designed to test students’ programming skills, problem solving and teamwork.
Trinity student Andrej Ivaskovic, who is pursuing a PhD in Computer Science and who helped organise the event, said:
‘Teams have up to three students who tackle a variety of problems related to computer science, and their goal is to produce correct and fast programs that solve them. A team has only a single computer at their disposal and no Internet access.’
Contestants at the score board in the William Gates Building
Trinity Fellow, Professor Frank Stajano, is Director of Studies in Computer Science at Trinity and the co-founder, with MIT, of the international Cambridge2Cambridge cyber security challenge. He said:
Trinity and Cambridge have had another resounding success in this annual programming competition, after other Trinity teams won first place nationally and reached the world finals last year.
We have the good fortune of attracting some of the most talented young computer scientists in the world and we don’t want any of them to get bored because their course is too easy – however unlikely that is with such a thorough and rigorous Tripos.
A number of the Computer Science students we admit to Trinity have already won medals in the International Olympiads in Informatics when they were in high school, and it’s great to be able to offer them additional challenges, such as this one, that allow them to show off their outstanding abilities.
UKIEPC and NWERC are fantastic initiatives of which I continue to be a great supporter. I hope they will inspire all young computer scientists, here and anywhere, to reach for even higher goals than they thought they could achieve.
NUS ICPC Selection Contest For Regionals 2019 was conducted on 7 Sep 2019. Full details of the teams and students selected are found here.
Top 7 NUS teams and number of questions completed:
1. Pandamiao (Gan Wei Liang, Nguyen Tien Trung Kien, Ranald Lam), 12
2. 3Sophonomore (Robin Yu, Kwee Lung Sin, Sergio Vieri), 11
3. 3body3 (Sidhant Bansal, Bernard Teo, Bay Wei Heng), 10
4. 7 Halim (Steven Wijaya, Yehezkiel Raymundo, Lim Li), 9
5. Send Bobs to Alice (Nguyen Dinh Quang Minh, Tran Tan Phat, Le Quang Tuan), 8
6. Pokemon Goh (Vuong Hoang Long, Gabriel Goh, Nguyen Hoang Hai Minh), 7
7. spaghetteaM (Jerrell Ezralemuel, Henry Jayakusuma, Daniel Alfred Widjaja), 7
Each of the above top 7 NUS teams will be sent to exactly 2 out of 7 Asia Southeast and Pacific regionals, as follows:
1. The 2019 ICPC Asia Jakarta (Indonesia), 25 - 30 Oct 2019
NUS teams: 3Sophonomore, Send Bobs to Alice, and spaghetteaM
2. The 2019 ICPC Asia Bangkok (Thailand), 1 - 4 Nov 2019.
NUS teams: 3body3 and 7 Halim
3. The 2019 ICPC Asia Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), 7 - 10 Nov 2019
NUS teams: 3body3, Pokemon Goh, and spaghetteaM
4. The 2019 ICPC Asia Yokohama (Japan), 15 - 18 Nov 2019
NUS team: Pandamiao
5. The 2019 ICPC Asia Taipei-Hsinchu (Taiwan), 23 - 25 Nov 2019
NUS team: Pandamiao
6. The 2019 ICPC Asia Danang (Vietnam), 4 - 7 Dec 2019
NUS Teams: Send Bobs to Alice, Pokemon Goh
7. The 2019 ICPC Asia Manila (Philippines), 13 - 16 Dec 2019
NUS teams: 3Sophonomore, 7 Halim
The 2019 World Finals will be held in Porto, Portugal, March 31 - April 5, 2019, hosted by Universidade do Porto.
The ACM-ICPC (Association for Computing Machinery - International Collegiate Programming Contest) is considered as the "Olympics of Programming Competitions". It is quite simply, the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.
The ICPC is a multi-tier, team-based, programming competition. Headquartered at Baylor University, Texas, it operates according to the rules and regulations formulated by the ACM.
The ICPC traces its roots to 1970 with the first Finals in 1976. Last year, 40,266 students from 3,098 universities from 111 countries on six continents competed for the privilege of advancing to the ICPC World Finals. Participation is open to students from every university in the world.
Teams finishing in the top four positions will be awarded Gold Medals. Those teams finishing fifth through eighth place will be awarded Silver Medals. Those teams finishing ninth through twelfth place will receive Bronze Medals. Additional Bronze Medals may be awarded to teams solving the same number of problems as the twelfth place team and in a total elapsed time no more than 60 minutes more than the twelfth place team. Such teams will be awarded twelfth place.
The highest scoring team is the World Champion and will receive the World Champion Cup and plaques. The other top eleven teams, the Africa & Middle East Champions, the Asia East Champions, the Asia Pacific Champions, the Asia West Champions, the Europe Champions, the Latin America Champions, the Northern Eurasia Champions, and the North America Champions will also receive plaques.
From Codechef website:
In terms of prize money, the top team takes home $15,000 along with the ACM ICPC 2019 Gold medal. Three other teams getting Gold Medal are awarded $7,500. Each Silver Medal team gets $6,000 and each Bronze Medal team is awarded $3,000. Courtesy of the UPE Computer Science Honor Society, the First Solution Award will be $1,500. For the other solved problems, The First to Solve Award will be $1,200.
Sunday March 31 - Arrival & Welcome
Monday April 01 - Registration/RCD/Host/Sponsor Hospitality Day
Tuesday April 02 - Excursion/Opening
Wednesday April 03 - Dress Rehearsal
Thursday April 04 - World Finals (2019 ICPC World Finals 11:00 to 17:00 hrs Porto time, 19:00 to 01:00 Singapore time)
Friday April 05 - Departure
ICPC World Finals 2019 Team Ratings
1: Russia's Moscow State University
2: USA's Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3: Japan's The University of Tokyo
4: Poland's University of Warsaw
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22: UK's University of Cambridge (Team: Treenity, Contestants: Jeck Lim, Zoltán Molnár Sáska, David Wärn, Coach: Hayk Saribekyan)
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84: Singapore's National University of Singapore (Team: 3body2, Contestants: Sidhant Bansal,
Wei Heng Bay, Bernard Zhi Yi Teo, Coaches: Steven Halim, Suhendry Effendy)
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There are 50 teams from 25 universities and 10 countries taking part in this contest. The list of teams are here.
The 5-hr contest has just started at 0900 hrs Singapore time. You may watch the lives scoreboard here. Lim Li is in the official team 3NationsIOI with team mates Agus Sentosa Hermawan and How Si Wei,
The open contest scoreboard is here. Lim Jeck is in unofficial team Jacob Teo with team mates Jacob and Choong Yin.
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Update: Final Results
Top 20:
NUS teams:
3body2: Sidhant Bansal, Bernard Teo, Bay Wei Heng
power harder: Ling Yan Hao, Muhammad Irham, Raynold Ng
3NationsIOI: Agus Sentosa Hermawan, How Si Wei, Lim Li
