GSEP student participates in
International Programming Contest

We proudly introduce our GSEP 2nd year student who advanced to the World Finals of the 2017 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. Great job! Here is an article written by our student.

 

From May 20 to May 25, I, together with my teammates and coach from the Tokyo Tech’s School of Computing, participated in the 2017 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals held in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA. 120 teams from all over the world participated in the event. The host – Rapid City – is a big city with a small population of only 72000 people. Below is a short summary of my trip.

May 20 – Arrival

It was my first time to visit America. The flight experienced lots of turbulence. After 10 hours, the plane finally arrived in Denver. The friendly Customs Border Protection officer wished me good luck for the event. After several hours of waiting, we boarded another plane to travel from Denver to Rapid City. All contestants stayed in a fairly luxurious hotel.

May 21 – Rapid City Tour

The breakfast was well prepared. The morning activity was the Technology Innovation Seminar. We heard very inspiring talks about Mathematics, Computer Science and Probabilistic Programming. In the afternoon, I visited the famous Mt. Rushmore. At the moment we boarded our return bus, heavy downpour occurred.

May 22 – Opening Ceremony

In the morning, I joined the Tech Trek hosted by IBM. What I learned from there was the quote: “If we hold on to our past for too long, we will not be able to let go and realize the value of our future.”

In parallel with the main contest, ICPC Quests were held in which participants are asked to do certain tasks. Among the tasks include finding three native speakers of three different languages and making a video of each speaker saying “We are enjoying ICPC 2017 in Rapid City”. Another is to find a place that was given by just a small portion of the whole picture of that place . During the afternoon, I spent my time walking around the downtown area of Rapid City doing the quests. The scenery was nice, but because the city was relatively big, it was a little bit inconvenient to move around without cars.

The main event of May 22 was the Opening Ceremony. We were welcomed by Dr. Richard Gowen  – the president of Excellence in Computer Programming and the mayor of Rapid City. The mayor had a good sense of humor. Among his statements were “Rapid City is everything that Hollywood is not” and “I am not responsible for the weather because it is still controlled by the previous mayor”. Actually, I was impressed by the hospitality of people in Rapid City. There were strangers greeting me when I was walking around such as the guard of the supermarket who asked my team about our stay and the competition (somehow he knew that we were there for the competition).

May 23 – Dress Rehearsal

The dress rehearsal was basically a practice contest for contestants to get used to the environment. However, the dress rehearsal really told me how I should dress up the day after so that I would not suffer from the coldness of an ice arena.

May 24 – 2017 ACM ICPC World Finals

The competition lasted for 5 hours. With 5/12 problems solved, my team ranked 34th. There were 12 teams awarded with medals who solved at least 8 problems. Among the teams from Japan, the University of Tokyo won a bronze medal for 8 problems solved, the University of Aizu and Keio University ranked 56th for 4 problems solved. The champion was St. Petersburg State University.

After the competition, 2017 ACM ICPC Celebration and Dinner was held at Crazy Horse Memorial. Crazy Horse Memorial seems to be a museum – restaurant complex with a native Indian American vibe. I enjoyed a hoop dancing performance and a laser show about the crazy horse legend.

May 25 – Departure

Finally, it was the time for me to say goodbye to Rapid City. I was surprised that Dr. Gowen was in the hotel lobby at 7 am to see attendees off.

Summary

In general, I enjoyed the visit to Rapid City except for the weather that was out of the city mayor’s control. I was really impressed by the hospitality of the citizens of Rapid City and the nature of the city. For travelers who love nature and people’s hospitality, why don’t you pay a visit to Rapid City? Programming contests also have lots of fun. If you are interested, just give it a try!

 

Teams from Japan: Keio University (dark blue), Tokyo Institute of Technology (orange), University of Tokyo (light blue), University of Aizu (white). Photo taken by a professor of University of Tokyo.

Teams from Japan: Keio University (dark blue), Tokyo Institute of Technology (orange), University of Tokyo (light blue), University of Aizu (white). Photo taken by a professor of University of Tokyo.

 

 

 

 

 

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