Peking University, June 29, 2014:  PKU team claimed the first gold medal in the school’s history in the 38th Annual World Finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC), which was held in Ekaterinburg, Russia from June 22 to June 25.

Over two thousand universities from more than 90 countries and regions across six continents competed in the regional contests and 122 teams came through and gathered at Ural Federal University to have a final showdown, including 19 teams from China. During the final, each team is given five hours to solve 12 programming problems. Four teams were awarded gold medal. St. Petersburg State University and Moscow State University came in first and second, each having solved 7 problems. PKU and Taiwan University came in third and fourth with 6 problems solved. The full ranking can be found on the official website.

ACM-ICPC has become the most influential collegiate programming contest among college students. It is an annual contest aimed to showcase their innovation ability, team spirit and the skill of analyzing and solving problems through programming under pressure. Many world-renowned universities have claimed the gold medal during its history of over more than 30 years, such as MIT, Caltech, Harvard and Stanford.

PKU has participated in the contest for over a decade and this is the best performance so far. The members of the winning team are: Ni Zekun, Du Yufei and Luo Xiangyu. They are guided by Professor Li Wenxin and Luo Guojie from School of EECS.

Written by: Chen Long
Source: PKU News (Chinese)