DCU win at UK programming contest

A DCU team of first year undergraduate students from the School of Computing's new degree in Computational Problem Solving and Software Development (PSSD) took part in the IKIEPC computer competition at the weekend and were the highest placed undergraduate team in Ireland, and second only to a postgraduate team in Ireland.

The UKIEPC is the UK and Ireland sub-regional contest for the world renowned ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).  Fifty teams of undergraduate and postgraduate students competed in several designated competition centres around the UK and UCD in Ireland.   Points were awarded for solving algorithmic programming problems in the shortest and most efficient way possible with the PSSD-DCU team coming out as the highest placed undergraduate team in Ireland, Trinity College in second place and UCD in third place. That qualified them to compete at the European Regional finals in November at Delft University of Technology, Holland. The top teams from the European competition will go on to compete at the World Finals in Russia next June.

The DCU students, Conor Flynn, Abdullah Mohammad and Luke Barr, are past winners of the All-Ireland Programming competition (AIPO). They had a proven track record in programming and computing before they even enrolled in DCU and this result shows they are among the most talented young programmers in the country.

In September last year, Conor and Abdullah represented Ireland at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) for secondary school students after winning the All-Ireland Programming competition finals in DCU.