Over 8000 teams from 2000 universities annually compete for the medals of the ACM-ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Over 8000 teams from 2000 universities annually compete for the medals of the ACM-ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Each time out of 12 sets of medals 5-7 are won by the participants of the Programming Camp of PetrSU.

Once again the team of our university has made it to the World Finals of the ACM-ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contests, which will take place in the USA in May. Students, employees, teachers of PetrSU hope that our team will win the medals of this prestigious competition as it has happened before. The teams of Petrozavodsk State University have represented the national team of Russia in the World Finals seven times: 2002 (Hawaii, the USA), 2004 (Prague, the Czech Republic), 2006 (San-Antonio, the USA), 2007 (Tokyo, Japan), 2008 (Banff, Canada), 2010 (Harbin, China) and 2014 in Yekaterinburg. Over the time silver and two bronze medals have been added to the collection of PetrSU.

There have been individual successes too. Thus in 2005 Mikhail Spirichev took the 7th place in individual programming contest among the students of Russia. In 2006 PetrSU students V. Medvedev and M. Spirichev reached the final of professional championship held by Google. In 2011 postgraduate students A. Kolosov and M. Kryshen won the first two places at the conference contest “Microsoft Technologies in Theory and Practice of Programming”. Besides that, the young members of the Programmers’ Art Club of PetrSU have become the winners and medal-winners of All-Russian and international programming Olympiads. For example schoolboy Egor Voronetsky won a gold medal in Open Chinese Mathematics Olympiad (2013), while in 2006 Denis Denisov won his gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics.

What is the recipe for success of PetrSU programmers? The founder of the Programmers’ Art Club, the Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics Vladimir Alekseevich Kuznetsov knows the answer: “Nothing matters more that systematic work done on a highly professional basis. Our success is the result of long-term persistent work. It all started in 1996 with the creation of the Programmers’ Art Club intended to promote PetrSU as one of the leading universities of the Russian Federation in development of team collegiate programming. Here we work with schoolchildren and students. We provide them with knowledge of mathematical modeling, optimization, theory of algorithm and programming. We teach them to work in a team. One of forms of teaching is participation in test competitions, like Summer Programming Schools for schoolchildren in Olonets and Urozero, Summer and Winter Programming Camps, Open Championship of PetrSU in individual and team programming among students and schoolchildren etc.”

The Summer and Winter Programming Camps have become the trademark of Petrozavodsk University. They are the largest international student programming camps, which bring together the strongest teams from the leading universities of the world twice a year.

Petrozavodsk University has been holding the camps since 1998, since 2000 the event has been held twice a year in summer and winter. Step by step the camps have caught on and gained popularity outside the Republic, and now the whole country as well as foreign countries look forward to participating in these events. Since 2002 over 3000 from 17 countries have taken part in the camps, and 53% of the winners of the International Collegiate Programming Contest have trained at PetrSU.

One of the organizers Roman Soshkin noted that the camps assist in preparing the strongest Russian and foreign teams for the World Finals of the ACM-ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest. The contest rules of the camps are close to those of the World Finals: teams consisting of three people have 5 hours to solve most problems (from 10 to 12) in any programming language in shortest time. The contests are written by both coaches of the teams, and the participants themselves (usually by the winners or prize-winners of previous World Finals). There is variety of tasks, as they cover mathematics, programming, and data structures. For example, calculate the maximum volume that air balloons can occupy in a rectangular box of given dimensions, while the balloons can be placed only in certain points.

Imagine that you have a rectangular box and a number of points. Each point is a position where you can place an air balloon. In order to place the balloon in the point you’ll have to put its centre in this point and start blowing the balloon until it touches either one of the sides of the box or another balloon. You cannot use a point that is outside the box or inside one of the balloons, which are already there. Nevertheless you can use the points in any order, and you do not have to use all of them. Your task is to put balloons into the box in an order that will result in them occupying the maximum volume.

Equally challenging problems are awaiting the participants of next international winter programming camps, which will take place at PetrSU from January 30 till February 9. Time will tell who is the fastest and the most accurate in problem solving.