International Collegiate Programming Contest at the FAU

Since 1977 the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) takes place every year. Teams of three students try to solve about 13 programming problems within five hours. What makes this task even harder, is that there is only one computer available per team. The problems demand for solid knowledge of algorithms from all areas of computer science and mathematics, e.g., graphs, combinatorics, strings, algebra, and geometry. To solve the problems, the teams need to find a correct and efficient algorithm and implement it.The ICPC consists of three rounds. First, each participating university hosts a local contest to find the up to three teams that are afterwards competing in one of the various regional contests. Germany lies in the catchment area of the Northwestern European Regional Contest (NWERC) with competing teams from Great Britain, Benelux, Scandinavia, etc. The winners of all regionals in the world (and some second place holders) advance to the world finals in spring of the following year (2023 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt).

On January 27, 2024, the Winter Contest took place once again. 108 teams from 17 universities participated, including 15 teams from Erlangen. Our best team finished 32nd. On June 22, the German Collegiate Programming Contest was held at several German universities, with 15 teams from Erlangen. The best FAU team secured the 22nd position out of 94 participating teams from all over Germany. The NWERC took place on November 24 in Delft. FAU was represented by one team, which finished in the 19th position among 80 participating teams. As usual, we also conducted the main seminar “Hello World! - Advanced Programming” in 2024.