December 15, 2010
Amritapuri and Coimbatore campuses
From Amritapuri, India to Cairo, Eygpt. For the team of students from Fudan University in China, that won the regional contest this past Sunday here, this will be quite a trip!
The team competed in the regional finals of the world’s largest programming contest – the ACM-ICPC conducted at both Amritapuri and Coimbatore campuses of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, simultaneously. There was one other regional center in India at IIT-Kanpur.
The winning team from China solved 7 problems out of 10, beating 130 other teams to place first.
The team will now travel to Cairo in Eygpt for the world finals early next year.
Joining this team, will be teams that placed second and third (IIT-Delhi and D J Sanghvi College of Engineering respectively) as well as winning teams from the IIT Kanpur regional site.
“This was our first trip to India,” stated Yanghui Yu, who accompanied the Chinese students. He was chosen for the Best Coach Award.
And it was easy to see why. Not only did he train his students in solving difficult programming problems, he also mentored them in other aspects of their participation in the contest.
“This is a good opportunity for us to interact with some of the best programmers and problem-solvers from around Asia,” he emphasized. “These interactions will plant seeds for life-long friendships.”
Indeed they might. There were teams from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other Asian nations, in addition to teams from all over India. Participants articulated, over and over again, that their contest experience was very positive.
Many contestants in Amritapuri also met Chancellor Amma.
“We loved the Amrita campus and the hospitality we received,” stated Sree Ram from NIT Trichy. “It is an amazing experience to be part of this event.”
Sree Ram and his team participated last year also; this year the team members noted a lot of improvement in their performance in the contest.
Perhaps the training camps organized prior to the contest helped. A camp was organized in July at the Infosys campus in Bengaluru and a warm-up contest in September, in collaboration with Directi.
IBM, Directi and Infosys sponsored the final event.
Preceding this event, was the online contest in October, which saw participation from nearly 450 teams.
Amrita hosted the regional contest for the sixth year in a row. This year, there were double the number of participating teams and coming from double as many different locations and colleges as last year.
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