2013 Press Releases
Programmers of future compete at UCC
UCC hosted the largest computer programming competition in the country recently.
Over 60 participants, ranging from secondary school pupils to undergraduate and postgraduate students, entered the Irish Collegiate Programming Contest held in the state-of-the art Western Gateway Building on Saturday 6 April 2013.
Sponsored by Big Fish Games, this year’s overall winners were amongst the youngest contestants, a secondary school team from Carrigaline, Cork, comprising of Abdullah Mohammad (Carrigaline Community School) and Adam O'Sullivan (St Peters Community School Passage West).
Competing against 21 teams mainly comprised of third level students was no mean feat for these exceptional young people. Abdullah Mohammad is no stranger to UCC; for the past year, he took part in the Munster Programming Training programme run by Dr Sabin Tabirca at Department of Computer Science, UCC. He is also one of six competing for a place to represent Ireland in the International Olympiad in Informatics, to be held in in Australia this July.
The winners of the postgraduate category were 'What team?', whose members include Juan Jose Mendoza Santana and Sichao Qian from National University Ireland, Maynooth. Another UCC team, JAIL, involved programmer Mohamed Cisse, who achieved second place in the postgraduate category.
Professor Barry O’Sullivan, Head of the Department of Computer Science at UCC who established the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Student Chapter over four years ago and is the current Faculty Sponsor of the competition, congratulated the contestants. "UCC is very proud to host this event for its fourth year. It is a vital showcase of the level of interest, commitment, and talent that exists in the subject of computer programming. The ACM Student Chapter has organised another very exciting event this year - a huge congratulations and thanks to them".
Each team of competitors was given five problem sets that tested their problem solving, numeracy and computer programming skills. This competition is not for novice programmers but for those who have a passion for programming.
Remarking on the enthusiasm demonstrated for programming, Ian Hurlock Jones, Chief Technology Officer, Big Fish said: “Big Fish is delighted to have sponsored this year's Irish Collegiate Programming Competition, as programming is key to our business and underpins everything we do. As an Irish employer of a growing group of highly skilled software and QA engineers and programmers, we are constantly looking for new talent and it was inspirational to see the best and brightest Computer Science students being encouraged to hone their skills in a competitive and fun way".
Results:
1st place: Munster Programming Training (MPT) Cycle 2 team - Abdullah Mohammad, Carrigaline Community School and Adam O'Sullivan, St Peters Community School Passage West
2nd place: Team 'Tea++' from Trinity College Dublin - Emma Carrigan, Glenn Jackson and Enno Hermann, coached by Michael Clear from TCD
Joint 3rd: Two secondary school teams, one from the All Ireland Programming Olympiad, Richard Tyan (Cistercian College Roscrea in Tipperary) and Maciej Goszczycki (Colaiste Chroah Abhann, Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow), and the other another success for MPT Cycle 1 Team - Caellen Feller, (Colaiste Choilm, Ballincollig), Colm ó hIcí (Colaiste Choilm, Ballincollig), Seafra Forder (home schooled)
For more information see:
Munster Programming Training: (http://www.ucc.ie/en/csschools/mpt/)
ACM Student Chapter at University College Cork: http://acm.ucc.ie/
All Ireland Programming Olympiad: http://aipo.computing.dcu.ie/