Tokyo Tech team qualifies for 2023 ICPC World Finals

Student team tonosama has won first place in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Asian regional contest, held in Yokohama on December 27 and 28, 2022. This is the first time that a Tokyo Tech team has won a regional competition. This means that the Institute will compete in the ICPC World Finals in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to be held from November 12 to 17, 2023. The programming contest will take place on November 15.

ICPC, held under the auspices of the ICPC Foundation, is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contests in the world. In 2018, over 52,000 contestants from 3,233 universities in 110 countries and regions competed in regional competitions in an attempt to reach the finals.

Teams participate in domestic competitions, with the best performing teams advancing to regional competitions. The top regional performers are then selected for the World Finals. In the Asia-Pacific region, regional competitions are held in several countries.

In the online domestic competitions, teams of three members must solve six to seven problems within three hours. At the regional level, this increases to approximately ten problems to be solved within five hours. The difficulty level of the problems ranges from simple computational problems to those that are solved by combining multiple algorithms. Only one computer is available for each team, highlighting the importance of effective teamwork over individual programming skills. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least amount of time is the winner.

Some of us are members of a Tokyo Tech laboratory specializing in discrete optimization. We hope we can effectively utilize the abilities each of us has developed through research and competitive programming to seriously compete on the world stage.