Gold Medal for the University of Warsaw team

St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics won the 36th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contess. The University of Warsaw team was second, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology team was third. The Shanghai Jiao Tong University team was fourth and at the same time the last best team awarded with the gold medal.

The ICPC Finals gathered 112 winning teams of regional competitions. During the event UW was visited by over 1000 people. It was a great honour to organize this exquisite and prestigious event.

"You need to use your brains here!"

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is the oldest and most prestigious academic programming competition in the world with student participants. The contest is organised under the auspices of the Association for Computing Machinery - an international association of programmers, with over 80,000 members. ACM is an institution granting an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in programming - the Turing Prize. Also the winners of the ACM ICPC Finals are recognised and honoured during the Turing Prize Awarding ceremony.

- In June Poland will host the Finals of the European Football Championship UEFA Euro 2012 - states Madamme Rector of UW, Professor Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow. - Due to this event new roads, hotels and stadiums are constructed. The impact of ACM ICPC 2012 World Contest is not so spectacular, however, the winners will have to demonstrate a more sophisticated skill - you have to use your brains here! Therefore, I am looking forward to ACM ICPC Finals much more than to the football championship - Professor Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow has stated.

This year the 36^th ACM ICPC Finals is held. Warsaw is the 4^th European city hosting the competition. - ACM ICPC is the most prestigious academic event of this kind in the world, we feel privileged to have an opportunity of organizing it, which is a great honour for us. The competition is organized in Poland for the first time - Professor Krzysztof Diks, the ICPC 2012 Finals Deputy Director has stated. Indeed, every year a number of renowned universities from all over the world apply for the possibility to host the event. In the past the competition was held in Orlando, Beverly Hills and Tokyo. The prestigious character of the event is definitely emphasized by a number of most respectful patrons, including Bronisław Komorowski - the President of the Republic of Poland, Waldemar Pawlak - Deputy Prime Minister, Barbara Kudrycka - the Minister of Science and Higher Education or Radosław Sikorski - the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Programming aces from Poland

Young Poles have achieved great success in collegiate programming. - The team representing the University of Warsaw over the last 18 consecutive years has been qualifying for the finals of the competition. Only one other university has been equally successful - The University of Waterloo in Canada - Professor Jan Madey, the ICPC 2012 Finals Director has stated. This year Poland is represented by four excellent teams: the Champions of the Central Europe - the students of the University of Warsaw, and the teams from the Jagiellonian University, the University of Wrocław and Poznań University of Technology. The UW team has already won the championship twice: in 2003 in Beverly Hills and in 2007 in Tokyo. Will they be so successful this year? We will find out soon.

The three-member teams participating in the competition are given 5 hours to solve between 8 to 12 problems. Each team uses only one computer. The problems are presented in a form of short stories in English. The contestants have to derive a specific algorithmic problem, formulate an appropriate algorithm and program it using a selected programming language. The tasks completed are electronically submitted to the judging panel. The final ranking of the teams is composed on the basis of the number of problems solved; in case of equal number of problems solved the overall time spent on developing the solutions becomes the decisive factor. - If you want to win the competition, you have to be an excellent mathematician, IT specialist and programmer. At the same time you need to be a good team player - the members have to demonstrate complementary skills and abilities. Ideally, each team member should specialise in one discipline. For example, one may like geometry, one could specialise in algebra and the third one may like combinatorics-related problems - Professor Jan Madey, the Finals Director and UW teams supervisor has explained.

The Finals of The International Collegiate programming Contest have been lasted for 5 days. The competition was held on May 17^th at the UW Faculty of Management in 3, Szturmowa Street.

The opening ceremony took place on May 15^th in Sala Kongresowa of the Palace of Culture and Science (PKiN). The official address to the contest participants was followed by "QUADROMORPHOSIS" - a 4D show, directed by Piotr Szabliński, with choreography by Agnieszka Glińska and music composed by Tomasz Szymuś. The performance stunningly combines light, music, dance, animation and 3D effects.

The closing ceremony took place on May 17^th in the University Library. A performance of Warszawianka Group of Song and Dance honoured the ceremony.

The sponsor of the Finals was IBM, the local strategic partner - PKO Bank Polski. The Finals organisation was supported by the Ministry of Economy and the Municipality of Warsaw. The official website of the ACM ICPC 2012 Finals http://www.icpc2012.pl/