Posted: 28th November 2016

On Sunday November 20 the Northwestern Europe Regional Contest (NWERC) of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contents took place at the University of Bath. Oxford entered three teams, two of which were placed in the top five, out of more than 100 competitors.

A gold medal, and third place overall was won by team ‘Catz CS Society (1)’.  Team ‘Curious Coding’ also won a gold medal, achieving fourth place in the completion.

NWERC 2016 is an official regional contest in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.  The goal of each team is to solve as many algorithmic problems as possible within the 5-hour time limit. Potential solutions are submitted and corrected by an automated judging system.  The regional competition draws students from colleges and universities throughout Belgium, Luxembourg, Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

The winning teams consisted of:

Catz CS Society (1):

• Hristo Venev (1st year undergraduate Computer Science, St Catherine's College)
• Mihail Jianu (1st year undergraduate Computer Science, St Catherine's College)
• Sauyon Jason Lee (2nd year undergraduate Computer Science, St Catherine's College)

Curious Coding: 

• Alexandru Valeanu (2nd year undergraduate Computer Science Oriel College)
• Gabriel-Robert Inelus (2nd year undergraduate Computer Science Keble College)  
• Ragnar Groot Koerkamp (Masters student, Mansfield College)

The competition scoreboard is available here: http://nwerc2016-scoreboard.bath.ac.uk/static/scoreboard/static.html

The top three teams from this round of the completion – Oxford’s ‘Catz CS Society’, alongside the University of Helsinki’s ‘Game of Nolife’, and ‘Omogen Heap’, the team from Sweden’s KTH – Royal Institute of Technology  – will advance to the ACM ICPC world finals.  The word finals will take place in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA, in May 2017.