CS Team Headed to ICPC World Championship

For the third consecutive year, a team from the CS department has advanced to the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals. The ICPC is the premiere collegiate programming competition that brings together students from around the globe to solve real-world problems, fostering collaboration, creativity, innovation, and the ability to perform under pressure.

The team composed of first-year PhD students Hengjie Zhang, Zhenjia Xu, and Runzhou Tao first qualified at the Greater New York regional last October. At the North America Championship held in February, the team competed without their third team member, Zhenjia Xu, who was in China because of visa issues due to the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.

“We were worried about competing with just the two of us,” said Hengjie Zhang. Luckily, he and Runzhou Tao are good friends and knew how to work well with one another. They worked with their coaches, Chengyu Lin and Peilin Zhong, to prepare for the North American Championship in Atlanta, Georgia. Continued Zhang, “It was hard but Runzhou is good at math and I am good at programming so we managed to win!”

Even with just two members, team Columbia-ūnus secured a win and is one of 19 teams from North America to compete in the World Finals. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s World Finals will be held in Moscow, Russia in June 2021.