Computer Science Programming Talents Secure Third Medal at ICPC Asia-East Final 2022

HKBU’s Computer Science programming team has once again demonstrated their exceptional skills by winning a silver medal at the 2022 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Asia-East Continent Final Contest, held in Shanghai from 24-26 March 2023. This marks the team’s third medal at ICPC Contests, showcasing their hard work and dedication.

The team, consisting of two undergraduates, Yuqi Lu and Haoyang Song (BSc in Computer Science, Year 4), and research postgraduate, Yunxiang Zhao (MPhil, Year 1), was supervised by Xuliang Zhu (PhD, Year 3) and led by Dr. Xin Huang, Associate Professor of the Department. The competition required the team to solve more than ten long coding problems, each with varying difficulty and flavour, within a five-hour period.

Drawing from their experiences at the Jinan and Hong Kong Asia Regional Contests, the team developed a rigorous weekly training routine to prepare for the ICPC Contests. This training helped them improve their coding and logical thinking abilities, enabling them to tackle the complex problems presented at the contests.

"The ICPC Contest was a highly competitive and intellectually demanding experience that challenged us to apply our programming knowledge and logical reasoning skills under extreme time pressure. Through our weekly training, we developed a deep understanding of different programming techniques and honed our teamwork coordination, which enabled us to solve a wide range of complex problems efficiently and effectively," shared Yunxiang Zhao.

As the coach of the team, Dr. Xin Huang expressed his excitement about the progress made by his talented students. "It is truly rewarding to witness the continuous growth and development of the team in programming and problem-solving. Their remarkable achievement in the ICPC Contests showcases their technical abilities, teamwork skills, and commitment to excellence, and the Department takes immense pride in their accomplishments."

ICPC is the world’s largest and most highly participated contest of its kind, often referred to as the "Olympic Games" of the IT world. The contest aims to enable college students to fully demonstrate their ability to analyse and solve problems through computers. In the 2022-2023 season, ICPC Asia-East Continent set up seven regional competitions in Shenyang, Xi’an, Hefei, Jinan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of students participated in the preliminary election, and thousands made it to the regional competitions. A total of 840 people from 280 teams advanced to the latest Asia-East Continent Final Contest.