ICPC @ ETH Zurich

We participated in the ICPC EUC last weekend in Prague, where we competed against the top 13 teams from each European region. dETHroners(Teo, Paula, Michal), finished 11th out of 52 teams. While this event offered teams a chance to qualify for the ICPC World Finals 2024 in Kazakhstan, dETHroners secured a spot by smashing the SWERC in Paris earlier this year.

On Friday morning, Teo, Michal, and I were so eager that we hit Zurich airport super early. Meanwhile, Paula arrived just in time, having timed her arrival two minutes before boarding perfectly. Once in Prague, we hopped on trams that seemed to have witnessed the invention of the wheel. Further, we did an extensive sightseeing thanks to Michal’s guiding skills. Almost geting lost in a train station? But hey, we did not get stuck in the train station this time 🙂

The opening ceremony was a blast, filled with Czech humor and a Soviet Theremin Concert. And who could forget the surprise guests: Boston Dynamics Robots… most of them managed to walk, at least.

The Czech Technical University was like stepping into a fantasy world: elevators called “paternosters” and doors straight out of a hobbit’s dream. Of course, snapping pics by those hobbit doors was important—memories to show after 20 years?

During the contest, the coaches had to listen to a one-hour answer by the ICPC Executive Director explaining why ACM stopped sponsoring ICPC. Fortunately, I was preoccupied with the mirror contest alongside the Coach of Universität des Saarlandes.

Overall, everyone was impressed by the Prague organizers, who managed to avoid any major issues this time, unlike the two-hour power outage during the last contest in Prague. Some attendees were puzzled by the decision to hold the contest under a glass ceiling though!

HC2 is Switzerland’s biggest programming contest and it will be held on Saturday, April 13th, at EPFL in Lausanne. Similarly to the ICPC, you participate in teams of up to three programmers sharing one computer.

The CPC Committee at VIS will cover the participation fees and reimburse the train ticket to Lausanne. Visit https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/693/RTWxphCmYV-DVPS3g3hPTw/ for more information.

We will be hosting Competitive Programming Meetups every Thursday at 7 pm until the end of the semester. The meeting room is always either CAB H52 or H53.

Link to Discord: https://discord.gg/yBDJZr5dSt

During the last weekend of January, two teams from ETH Zürich, led by coaches Ahmet and Bernhard, participated in the ICPC Southwestern Europe Regional Contest held in Paris. The contest included 108 teams from 65 institutions spanning France, Israel, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.

True to the name, the dETHroners(Theodor, Paula, and Michal) dethroned the SWERC, achieving the gold medal and first place with 11 solved problems. This marked a historic moment for ETH, as our last first-place finish was 13 years ago.

doublETHink(Jasmin, Chris, and Ema) solved 8 problems and narrowly missed the bronze medal due to a slight time penalty.

Besides, doublETHink were the first team to solve the problem J, while dETHroners accomplished the same feat for problem G.

This performance qualified the dETHroners for the upcoming ICPC European Championship in Prague this March and the World Finals in Astana this September.

Swiss Subregional 2023-24 took place on December 9th at ETH, EPFL and USI. All three top positions within the top 3 were secured by students from ETH, with a total of six students from ETH achieving positions in the top 10. We have added it to Codeforces Gym for future training, more info can be found here.

ICPC Swiss Subregional 2023-24 will happen on December 9th, 9:15! For more information, including signup, please go to https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/624/.

In late August, the ICPC hosted its first ICPC Challenge Championship powered by Huawei. Qualification for this event was earned through good placement in ICPC challenges held on Codeforces. Two students from ETH were invited to participate in the championship. Bernhard qualified by achieving second prize in the contest “Topology-Aware VM Placement”. Konstantin received an invitation as a coach and received an award for Outstanding Mentorship for his guidance to the ETH teams in the ICPC world finals.

The championship, held at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, brought together 58 contestants from around the world. The challenge focused on “Buffer Sharing and Pre-allocation for Multi-tenant Databases”, with Bernhard ranking 24th. Aside from the competition, participants enjoyed various activities such as a tour of Huawei’s campus & factories, as well as a meeting with Huawei’s CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei. Minutes of the meeting can be found here.

For those interested in upcoming ICPC challenges, announcements and details are regularly posted on Codeforces. These challenges differ from traditional ICPC contests, emphasizing a single optimization problem and are open to participants with no age or university restrictions.

Further Information on the ICPC Challenge Championship can be found here.

First things first, HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to the amazing team of Marcel Bezdrighin, Antti Röyskö and Yuhao Yao for achieving the 5th place at the ICPC World Finals Dhaka, winning a silver medal, and becoming ICPC Europe Champions! This is ETH’s first silver medal, and the best performance of any SWERC university in the history of the contest! There are some images in the end of this article.

On another note, the ICPC Swiss Subregional 2022-23 will happen on December 10th, 9:15! For more information, including signup, please go to https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/457/.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s local qualifier contest! Navigate to this link to see the full standings and tasks.

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The VIS ACM committee invites you to the ICPC Swiss Subregional Contest 2022 sponsored by Citadel | Citadel Securities on Saturday, November 27th at 9:15 to 16:30! Meeting point: HG G1.

ICPC is the world’s largest collegiate coding contest, and once again we are looking for talented programmers who are skilled enough to represent ETH! The first step is to participate at the Swiss Subregional, happening right here in Zurich.

Fortunately, the situation is looking better than last year and we’ll be able to hold the contest in real life! A valid COVID certificate and a mask worn at all times is mandatory.

The competition is individual (no teams) and held according to the usual ICPC format: 5 hours, 5 to 12 problems. There will be food served for lunch and after the contest. Here’s a rundown of the rules:

• You will be able to choose between a variety of languages, including ICPC’s official languages: C, C++, and Java.
• The contest will be held on ETH computers in a closed-book format; no online resources of any kind are allowed, and you are not allowed to use any code that you didn’t write during the contest.
• Each solved problem gives exactly one point. There are no partial points and ties will be broken using a time-based penalty.
• You will need a Codeforces account to participate. You should create this account in advance of the contest on https://codeforces.com

The contest is open to all ETH students. Among the best students satisfying the ICPC eligibility criteria [1], two teams of three students each will be selected to represent ETH at the regional contest of south-west Europe, SWERC [2].

This year’s contest is sponsored by Citadel | Citadel Securities!

Citadel is a global investment firm built around world-class talent, sound risk management, and innovative leading-edge technology. For thirty years, Citadel’s hedge funds have delivered meaningful and measurable results to top-tier investors around the world, including sovereign wealth funds, public institutions, corporate pensions, endowments and foundations.

Citadel Securities is a leading global market maker across a broad array of fixed income and equity securities. Our world-class capabilities position us to meet the liquidity demands of our diverse group of institutional clients in all market conditions. In partnering with us, our clients, including asset managers, banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds, government agencies and public pension programs are able to gain a powerful trading advantage and are better positioned to meet their investment goals.

Interested? Sign up now before November 26th at https://vis.ethz.ch/en/events/298!

If you have any questions regarding the contest, please do not hesitate to contact us at acm@vis.ethz.ch.

PS: Wondering how this looked like last year? Take a look at the photos below by our wonderful contestants from the last ICPC World Finals! 🙂

[1] https://icpc.global/regionals/rules

[2] http://swerc.eu/