IIIT-H team makes it to ACM-ICPC world finals

IIIT-H team makes it to ACM-ICPC world finals
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Highlights

IIIT-Hyderabad’s team mobius_treap has qualified for the World Finals of ACM-ICPC - the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

Hyderabad: IIIT-Hyderabad’s team mobius_treap has qualified for the World Finals of ACM-ICPC - the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

IIIT-Hyderabad’s Team - mobius_treap - Rajas, Tanuj, Sriram- secured the first position in INDIA-FINALS and qualified to represent IIIT-Hyderabad in the ACM ICPC World Finals - 2017 which is to be held in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA from 20th May - 25th May 2017.

Vanjabe Rajas Mangesh is currently in third year of Computer Science dual degree programme at the institute. Sriram Narayanan is pursuing fourth year undergraduate Computer Science programme at the institute. While Tanuj Khattar is in the third year of undergraduate computer science programme at the institute.

The contest is a multitier, team-based, programming competition headquartered at Baylor University. It involves a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the ACM-ICPC World Finals.

Computing disciplines at almost 2,736 universities from over 102 countries on six continents participate in this competition. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure.

Sharing his pride, Prof Venkatesh Chopella, The team’s coach Prof Venkatesh Choppella, Associate Professor, IIIT Hyderabad said, “ACM-ICPC is the number one event in the world for programmers.

It brings a lot of prestige and visibility to the institute, considering IIIT-Hyderabad’s reputation is already quite formidable as a mecca for programming in the country.

The problems in the competition are very advanced and challenging from an algorithmic point of view. Not only do the students have to be good at coding, but also at abstract thinking. Its very intense, given there’s a set time limit.”

When asking what inspired them to participate in the event the mobius_treap team said, “All of us are interested in algorithmic programming and participate regularly in online programming competitions on codechef and codeforces.

As ACM ICPC is the oldest and most renowned programming competition and IIIT has been sending teams for ICPC World Finals consistently, we thought of participating in the competition”.

Sharing about the challenges faced by the team they said, “The contest consists of solving algorithmically challenging problems.

To solve the problems, one requires a thorough knowledge of algorithms,mathematics and analytical thinking. We prepared for it by participating in many 5-hour practice contests to get used to the contest environment and improve team coordination”.

When asked how many other teams have participated in the finals they replied, “8 teams from India have qualified for the finals. Some of the other teams include: Team FacelessMen from IIT Kanpur, Team Rocket from IIT Bombay, Team DAFruitSalad from DAIICT Gandhinagar, Team ThirdFloor from CMI,Chennai. We are the only team from Telangana that has made it to the finals”.

Takling about their preparation about the finals mobius_treap team said, “We are practicing previous world finals contest tasks and also focusing on learning new topics and covering more theory. Along with this, we are also participating in other harder training contests available online”.

How has your coach Prof Choppella helped to prepare the team for the competition?

Sharing their gratitude for the Prof Choppella, their guide team has said, “We received valuable inputs from Prof. Choppella and he has alwaysbeen very prompt in helping us whenever required. He was also veryhelpful in providing institutional and administrative support”.

“No Indian team has ever won this competition. The top ranks have always been dominated by Russians. The best ever performance by an Indian team was rank 18, our goal will be to get a rank better than that”, they added.

When asked about the previous rounds they have attended the team said, “In the past rounds, we have realized that we are weak in certain topics and are trying to rectify that by upsolving the unsolved problems after the contest. We are trying to minimize such errors.

Secondly, we also need to improve a bit on our time management and make sure we don't get stuck on a certain problem and waste our time. Trying out all problems during the contest is very important”.

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