International Collegiate Programming Contest at the FAU

Since 1977 the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) takes place every year. Teams of three students try to solve about 13 programming problems within five hours. What makes this task even harder, is that there is only one computer available per team. The problems demand for solid knowledge of algorithms from all areas of computer science and mathematics, e.g., graphs, combinatorics, strings, algebra, and geometry. To solve the problems, the teams need to find a correct and efficient algorithm and implement it.The ICPC consists of three rounds. First, each participating university hosts a local contest to find the up to three teams that are afterwards competing in one of the various regional contests. Germany lies in the catchment area of the Northwestern European Regional Contest (NWERC) with competing teams from Great Britain, Benelux, Scandinavia, etc. The winners of all regionals in the world (and some second place holders) advance to the world finals in spring of the following year (2023 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt).
On January 29, 2022, after a one-year break, the Winter Contest took place again, this time organized by our colleagues from CPUlm, again in an online format. 59 teams from 12 colleges and universities took part, including 6 teams from Erlangen. The best FAU team finished 12th. On June 27th, the German Collegiate Programming Contest took place at several German universities and colleges, with 5 teams from Erlangen. The best team from Erlangen came fourth out of the 73 participating teams from all over Germany. The NWERC took place in Delft on November 27th. FAU was represented by 2 teams that finished 43rd and 60th out of 136 participating teams.The seminar "Hallo Welt! - Programmieren für Fortgeschrittene" did not take place in 2022.