The competition for the Cup of the Head of the Republic of Karelia was held as part of the winter training camp that gathered the strongest student teams to prepare for the world programming championship.

The cup and the title of the "Absolute winner of the Cup of the Head of the Republic of Karelia in Programming 2016" was won by the team of Ural Federal University consisting of Alexei Danyluk, Oleg Merkuryev, Nikita Sivukhin, coached by Michael Rubinchik.

 "Despite the complexity of the problems, the teams coped quite well, and are quite ready for the World Cup finals. The problems were designed by the coaches and the organizing committee of the competition. Those are usually very complex programming problems. They are not used explicitly in practice, but the one who solves them will be able to solve any practical problem. The competition was attended by a large number of teams, including many foreign ones. All the participants are very strong. Most often, the one who wins the Cup of Karelia becomes the world champion," said Professor Vladimir Kuznetsov, Petrozavodsk State University, the Head of the Club of Creative Programming.

Yury Shabanov, the Deputy Head of the Republic of Karelia on cooperation with the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia, said in his address to the participants of the competition: "Year by year, the prestige and authority of Petrozavodsk State University is increasing. This year, more than 180 participants from different countries participated in team programming competitions held in Petrozavodsk State University. For us it is a great honor. The Republic of Karelia is one of the leaders in the development of information and communication technologies. The Cup of the Head of the Republic of Karelia is a kind of primaries for the World Championship. It is encouraging that almost every year the winners of Karelian Cup become prize-winners of the World Championship. These training camps provide their participants with an opportunity to test their ability and achieve good results."

All in all, the competition was attended by more than 180 students (54 teams), representing universities of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Great Britain.

According to the results of the competition, the winners were as follows:

The 1st place: The team of the Ural Federal University (Alex Danyluk, Oleg Merkuriev, Nikita Sivukhin, coached by Michael Rubinchik).

The 2nd Place: Warsaw University team (Marek Sokolowski, Marcin Smulevich, Wojciech Nadara, coached by Tomas Kotsumaka).

The  3rd place: the team of St. Petersburg State University (Igor Pyshkin, Alexei Gordeyev, Stanislav Ershov, coached by Andrey Lopatin).

The 4th place: the team of Lomonosov Moscow State University (Maxim Akhmedov, Alex Shlyunkin, Dmitry Gorbunov, coached by Andrew Shestimerov).

The 5th place: the team of Moscow Physical and Technical Institute (Artem Zhuk, Ivan Smirnov, Konstantin Semenov, coached by Mikhail Tikhomirov).

 The 6th place: the team of Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University (Vladislav Epifanov, Nikolai Kalinin, Mikhail Krivonosov, coached by Vladislav Epifanov).

To recap, the competitions were held in two rounds on the scheme and the Rules of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). The absolute winner is the team that solves in the allotted time the highest number of problems and has the least total penalty time. In case of an equal number of solved problems and penalty time, the winner is the first team to submit the last problem solved.

The competition for the Cup of the Head of the Republic of Karelia is:

- A kind of "primaries" for the International Collegiate Programming Contest: since 2004, the winners of the Cup of the Head of the Republic of Karelia have become the champions of the world 8 times, and the participants always win the large part of the prizes of the competition.

- One of the brands of Karelia, which allows us to position our country as a leading region of the Russian Federation in the development of modern information technology and the support of talented youth.