First-year students of HSE Perm took part in the Northern Eurasia Finals-2022
The final team competitions of the World Programming Championship ICPC-2022 among students in the Northern Eurasian region NERC were held at the same time in Almaty, Barnaul, Kutaisi, and Saint Petersburg. The first-year students of the educational programme "IT System Development for Business" Valeria Belash, Alisa Dolnykova, and Kirill Talan took part in the competitions.
In order to get to the finals, the HSE Perm team passed the selection among 346 teams of the Ural region: first, the qualification round took place and then the competitions in Yekaterinburg. The results showed that our first-year students were among the 25 strongest teams and went to the final competition in Saint Petersburg. According to the results of the final, the 12 strongest teams from the Northern Eurasia Finals rating table are heading to the final of the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Championship.
The competition lasted 5 hours, during which participants had to solve the maximum number of tasks offered by the jury. The solution means the development of an algorithm and the writing of the program code in one of the languages allowed by the rules of the competition. Meanwhile, the level of complexity of the tasks as well as the requirements for algorithms are increasing every year. To solve the task, it is necessary that the algorithm uses a minimum amount of memory and works as fast as the algorithm developed by the task compilers, who are experts of the highest level – ICPC winners of previous years.
The HSE Perm student teams have competed in all Northern Eurasia finals since 2014. In 2022, for the first time, the team consisted exclusively of first-year students of the educational program "IT System Development for Business". It was difficult for them to compete with more experienced teams, but they showed perseverance and fought to the end.
Kirill Talan, student of the educational programme "IT System Development for Business"
All this way from computers in the third HSE building in Perm to the M-1 arena in St. Petersburg was extremely interesting! When our team was registering for the Olympiad, we did not think about the next stages, but it turned out that each time we went further and further. The joy received from the organizers' messages that we were going to Yekaterinburg and then to St. Petersburg was simply beyond words! In general, I am more than satisfied with our result, but I believe that there is always room for improvement, so we do not plan to stop there. On the contrary, in the coming years I would like to consolidate and multiply this success and go international.
Valeria Belash, student of the educational programme "IT System Development for Business"
Participating in the qualifying round on October 11 in the third HSE building, we could not even imagine that on December 7 we would take part in the semi-finals of the ICPC – the largest international programming Olympiad – in the M-1 arena in St. Petersburg! The festive atmosphere of the competition was impressive, and the balloons for each solved task turned out to be a pleasant surprise. We are immensely glad that we performed at such a serious level, we plan to further develop our Olympiad programming skills, and train hard to show better results next year.
Alisa Dolnykova, student of the educational programme "IT System Development for Business"
In December, our team was lucky enough to reach the semi-finals of the ICPC Olympiad, the largest international programming Olympiad for students. When we were applying for and writing the qualifying round on computers in the third building, we could not even think that we would go so far. I was very impressed with the scale of the Olympiad: a huge arena, hundreds of teams of programmers, and a friendly atmosphere since everyone is united by one goal that is to show their level in programming. But I'm not completely satisfied with our result, I would like to solve more tasks, and for this it is necessary to prepare more, to which I want to devote my time till next year in order to leave this Olympiad with a diploma in 2023.