Programming contest success in corona days

This year even the traditional ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) had to adapt to a pandemic environment. Instead of the initial, Divisional Round of ICPC, on Saturday October 17 we had a mock Regional Round with all the competitors participating from their homes. In total, 56 teams participated, from across Australia and New Zealand.

Team “TLE on test case 2020” from UNSW won the first place! They were the only team to  solve all 12 problems during a 5 hour competition, leaving behind the second placed team the “Pandemic Bugs” from RMIT University who solved 10 problems. Our winning team consisted of Angus Ritossa, Temmie Yao and Pengsen Mao, all first year CSE students.

Of further note was the all-ladies team “Fupoeefanfan”;  who were leading almost during the entire competition and eventually won the third place. This team included Yutong (Tina) Ji and Yibing (Miloris) Xu from UNSW and Zhaoyi (Yvonne) Hao who is yet to start her university studies. We hope they can all work together for many years to come.

Two years ago our team of Oliver Fisher, Mohammad Ishraq Huda and Ray Li  won a silver medal at the ICPC World Championship in Beijing, placed sixth in the World among more than 100 teams who won regional contests across the world. The UNSW coach, A/Prof.  Aleks Ignjatovic is confident that many more victories of the UNSW teams are forthcoming.

The next round of ICPC will be held on January 23, 2021, and UNSW students can still register teams by emailing to our coach Aleks (ignjat@cse.unsw.edu.au). UNSW teams will compete from the UNSW labs, while respecting social distancing. Two best placed teams will qualify for the upcoming ICPC World Finals, to be held at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, June 19-24, 2021.