St.
Petersburg State University Wins
IBM-Sponsored International Collegiate Programming
Contest
The World’s Brightest Computing Students Met in
Phuket to Compete in the “Battle of the Brains”
PHUKET, THAILAND – May 19, 2016 – A trio of students from St. Petersburg State University have
emerged as World Champions of the 40th Annual ACM International
Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals sponsored by IBM (NYSE: IBM). The contest,
hosted at Prince of Songkla University in Phuket, brought together over 1400 of
the next generation of developers from 40 countries, where they competed on the
most elite level of programming, as well as interacted and built with IBM’s
advanced set of developer tools and APIs on IBM Cloud.
Headquartered at Baylor University and
known as the “Battle of the Brains,” the world’s oldest and most prestigious programming competition
challenged 128 university teams, each comprised of three students, to solve a
series of complex real-world problems in just five hours. Demonstrating the
elite talent of its team members, St.
Petersburg State University successfully solved 11
problems to earn the victory.
“IBM values this opportunity to assemble the brightest
students from the world’s leading universities and share with them the
technology trends that will shape the future, such as tools that allow them to
build new innovations fueled by cloud, cognitive, unstructured data and more,”
said Gerald Lane, ACM-ICPC Sponsorship Executive and Director, IBM Open
Technologies & IP. “These students are the future leaders of our industry
and we are committed to fostering their development with these critical
technologies as they prepare to enter the global workforce.”
IBM is continuing to build the world’s fastest, most
accessible on-ramp to cloud for developers, the global population of which is
expected to reach 25 million by 2020 (Evans Data). By sponsoring the ACM ICPC
World Finals, IBM enabled contestants to learn about the most advanced cloud
toolbox available. IBM has been rapidly expanding breakthrough technologies
easily accessed by developers through its cloud, including quantum computing,
blockchain and cognitive. This ready foundation of transformative tools equips
programmers, designers and coders with the potential to build revolutionary
apps across a multitude of industries.
“The ACM-ICPC’s impact on these students’ productivity
and opportunity lasts a lifetime,” said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive
Director and Baylor University Professor. “I am excited to see what these
students will do with the dauntless problem solving abilities they showcased at
World Finals, as well as they knowledge they gained, as they continue their
academic and professional pursuits.”
Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Harvard University
and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology finished the competition in
second, third, and fourth places, all earning coveted gold medals. The regional
champions are:
- Cairo University – Faculty of Computers and Information (Africa and the Middle East)
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Asia)
- St. Petersburg State University (Europe)
- Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Latin America)
- Harvard University (North America)
- University of New South Wales (South Pacific)
The top twelve teams received medals:
- St. Petersburg State University (GOLD, 2016 WORLD CHAMPION)
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (GOLD, 2nd Place)
- Harvard University (GOLD, 3rd Place)
- Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (GOLD, 4th Place)
- University of Warsaw (SILVER, 5th Place)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SILVER, 6th Place)
- St. Petersburg ITMO University (SILVER, 7th Place)
- Ural Federal University (SILVER, 8th Place)
- University of Wroclaw (BRONZE, 9th Place)
- Nizhny Novgorod State University (BRONZE, 10th Place)
- Lviv National University (BRONZE, 11th Place)
- Fudan University (BRONZE, 12th Place)
