St John’s students wins gold in Northwestern European Regional Programming Contest

Date 9 December 2022

Undergraduate students Xingjian Bai and Andy van Horssen, together with teammate Yichen Huang (St Catz), came 4th place out of 145 competing teams
thumbnail_image001 The team receive their gold medals at the NWERC at Delft University

The Northwestern Europe Regional Contest (NWERC) is a contest in which teams from universities all over Northwestern Europe are challenged to complete a series of algorithmic problems. Each team has five hours to submit as many solutions as possible, and the team that solves the most problems at the end of the contest qualifies for the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals.

The highly complex nature of the problems means that the winners must demonstrate excellent teamwork skills, as well as technical knowledge, to succeed.

thumbnail_image002

Xingjian and Andy’s team managed to solve ten out of a possible twelve problems, putting them in 4th place on the leaderboard and securing them a ticket to the ICPC World Final in Egypt in 2023, representing Oxford and St John’s.

Xingjian Bai said: “We feel greatly honoured to have obtained a gold medal in NWERC and a ticket to the world final in Egypt next year. We would like to thank our tutors and the CS department for their constant support. Also, Andy and I would like to express our gratitude to St John’s college for funding our trip to Delft University through special grants“.

The Maths and Computer Science tutors said: We are delighted by the success of our students in European stage of this international competition, demonstrating their excellent ability and skills. This initiative entirely comes from the students, who formed their own team and trained and prepared for the competition by themselves. We’re very proud of their performance, and look forward to the final next year.

Please join us in congratulating the team, and wishing them the best of luck in Egypt next year!