A team of three ANU students have taken out the top prize in the South Pacific Regionals Round of the International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC).
After winning the regionals competition earlier in the year, the team were invited to compete in the South Pacific Regional Contest, which they went on to win.
Andrew Haigh, Benedict Morrissey and Dmitry Brizhinev have now been invited to compete in the world finals in Morocco in May next year.
Andrew Haigh, a PhD student from the Research School of Computer Science said the win came unexpectedly for the team.
“We definitely did not expect to win, because we knew there would be very tough competition from the other teams. We work very well as a team considering we have only been doing these contests together for a few months now.”
“I am excited at the prospect of going to the world finals and the chance to meet all of the other teams from around the world!”
At each of the competitions, the teams are given a problem then had five hours to solve it, using their skills in coding, mathematics and algorithms.
Benedict Morrissey, a bachelor of Science student majoring in Mathematics says he is expecting the problems in Morocco to be very difficult.
“Hopefully we will have looked at more problems of that difficulty level by then.”
Dmitry Brizhinev, Bachelor of Advanced Computing (R&D)/Science agrees.
“I’m not expecting it to be any easier in Morocco.”
“These competitions are possibly the most intense thing I’ve ever done, particularly the last hour. It takes several hours to calm down afterwards.”
Read more about the ICPC Challenge.