World Championship in competitive programming at KTH
KTH will be the host of the World Championship in competitive programming which will be held on a university campus for the first time, 18-22 April. A total of 100 teams from all over the world will participate in the competition which will also be shown live on TV.
The qualification rounds for the World Championship have been the largest ever – 7109 teams from 1838 universities in 88 countries have battled for the 100 team places in the finals. Each team consists of three people who, with the help of a computer, try to solve 10–12 problems during the course of the five-hour long final.
“This competition is a chance to show off KTH excellence internationally. But also the breadth of our talent as we have participated very successfully with a number of different teams over the years,” says Ingrid Melinder, Dean of the School of Computer Science and Communication at KTH.
Student teams from KTH have won several successes in competitive programming during the 2000s. KTH teams have brought home the Swedish Championship and the Nordic title every year since 2002. KTH has participated in the World Championship almost every year since 2001. This year’s competition kicks off in the KTH Library. The entire book hall has been emptied and transformed into a competition hall for the 300 programming stars from all over the world. The business area organisation ACM ICPC is arranging the competition and IBM sponsors the event, as well as organising their own events for participants and visitors.
The competitions are transmitted live over Internet and will also be shown on the big screen in the Student Union Building. The show will be commentated by journalist Nina Hjelmgren and Fredrik Niemelä who is this year’s competition supremo and also a doctoral student at KTH. He has been the driving force behind previous KTH participation in World Championship programming. The Axess TV channel will also transmit live between 9 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. on 21 April.
This year’s team from KTH is called #define beaver (;;) with its three participants Anders Sjöqvist, Ulf Lundström and Chen Xing who are coached by Marcus Forsell Stahre.
In addition to the Programming World Finals KTH is also hosting the Baltic Olympiad in Informatics, which is a problem-solving and programming competition for high school/upper secondary school students. Around ten countries from the Baltic Sea area will be participating in this competition.
Christer Gummeson