Newswise — The world finals of this year’s International Collegiate Programming Championship ended today in Porto, Portugal. MIPT team Shock Content featuring Andrey Sergunin, Ilya Stepanov, and Evgeny Belykh took 10th place and earned a bronze medal by solving seven problems. It also placed seventh in the ICPC Challenge held by Huawei as part of the finals.

Red Panda from Moscow State University (MSU) came in at No. 1 in the main contest, solving 10 problems, more than any of the competitors. It is also the only team to have won the finals for two years in a row with the same lineup. Students from MIT, Tokyo University, and the University of Warsaw finished the competition at Nos. 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

The Higher School of Economics team placed 11th. For the first time, three teams from one city, Moscow, have received ICPC medals. Russian students have won the championship for the eighth year running. A total of 135 teams from 46 countries took part in the competition.

In addition to that, the awards ceremony featured an announcement that Moscow will be the next city hosting ICPC. In 2020, the finals will be organized by MIPT with the support of RDI Creative, a company founded by an Institute alumnus.

“In the 2019 finals, 11 out of 12 medalists and 51 out of 135 participating teams trained with Moscow Workshops ICPC. It’s an international educational project originally established on the MIPT campus. Moscow Workshops prepares students from around the world to compete in the championship. Each of the 10 Russian teams at this year’s ICPC trained with the project,” said MIPT vice rector and Moscow Workshops founder Alexey Maleev. “We are delighted with the fantastic results achieved by the Russian teams. And what makes us twice as excited is that we are going to welcome everyone to Moscow for the 2020 ICPC finals.”

The University of Warsaw team got the “First to Solve” balloon before anyone else for solving problem E during the 14th minute of the contest. That team remained the leader with seven solved problems for a long time. But shortly before the results were frozen to build up the excitement in the audience and among the participants, the University of Tokyo took the lead with eight problems. In the final hour of the contest, the team from MSU shot ahead by submitting the right solutions to three problems.

Ten teams represented Russia in the 2019 finals. Among those scoring high were Moscow Aviation Institute, Saratov State University, Northern (Arctic) Federal University, the Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg branch), ITMO University, St. Petersburg University, and Ural Federal University. The Russian teams earned three medals out of 12. China and Poland received two medals each, while the U.S., Japan, North Korea, and South Korea got one each.

This year’s finals featured 11 problems. Over five hours, the MIPT team solved seven of them. The MSU team figured out 10.

At ICPC, four gold, four silver, and four bronze medals are awarded. The rules of the contest allow teams of three students from the same university. The championship is open for undergrads, grads, and first-year doctoral students aged 25 or younger. Students who participated in the finals twice or in the regional selection stage five times are not allowed to compete again. In the finals, a team has five hours and a computer to solve between eight and 12 problems stated in English. The participants write their solutions in C, C++, Java, Python, or Kotlin, and submit them to the testing server.

Team Shock Content was supported by the MIPT Endowment Fund.

ICPC is one of the main global student programming competitions. The championship dates back to a contest held at Texas A&M University in the 1970s. The global partner of ICPC 2019 was JetBrains, and the the European contest was sponsored by Huawei. In the runup to the finals, Moscow Workshops ICPC held the MosCode programming festival and training boot camps in three countries at once: in Russia, Oman, and Brazil.