programming world champions from Russia.
Why and what for?
Pavel Mavrin, Fedor Tsarev, Maxim Buzdalov
St. Petersburg National Research University of IT,
Mechanics and Optics
Computer Technologies Department
European Conference of Young Presidents Organization
( http://www.ypo.org/ )
Moscow, 22.09.2012, Ritz-Carlton Hotel

Association for Computing Machinery International
Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC)
• Since 1979, sponsored by IBM
• Became world championship in early 90-s
• Team = 3 students + 1 computer
• Over 10000 teams – 2200 universities – 85 countries
• Multi-tiered competition:
– 260 Quarterfinals
– 30 Semifinals
– World Finals (112 teams)
• Medals are given to top 12 teams – 4 gold medals, 4 silver medals and 4 bronze medals
• 5 semifinals and 2 finals per student at most
• World Finals 2013 will be hosted by University ITMO
2

• Contest lasts for 5 hours
• Problem set: 10-12 problems
• Problem “Coffee
Central” from ACM
ICPC World Finals
2011
• Coffee shops are located at some of the intersections
3

• A person is willing to walk at most d blocks for the morning coffee
• Example: d = 2
• Write the program to find the location from which you can reach the maximal number of coffee shops for the morning coffee
4

• Solution for the example – from best location you can reach 3 coffee shops
5

Russian teams on World Finals
• World champions:
– 2000 – St Petersburg SU
– 2001 – St Petersburg SU
– 2004 – University ITMO
– 2006 – Saratov SU
– 2008 – University ITMO
– 2009 – University ITMO
– 2012 – University ITMO
• Much more gold medals
6

• University ITMO – 1-st place
• MIT – 5-th place
• Caltech – 7-th place
• Harvard – 9-th place

8

World champions 2004 and President of Russia
Vladimir Putin
9

• University ITMO – 1-st place
• MIT – 2-nd place
• Tsinghua (China) – 6-th place
• Stanford – 7-th place
• All 11 Russian teams are among top 30 teams of the world

World champions 2008 and St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko
11

• University ITMO – 1-st place
• Tsinghua – 2-nd place
• Oxford – 5-th place
• MIT – 7-th place
• Carnegie Mellon – 8-th place

13

World Champions 2009 with President of Russia
Dmitry Medvedev
14

• University ITMO – 1-st place
• Harvard – 7-th place
• University of Tokyo –
11-th place
15

16

17

• Computer Technologies Department was founded by Vladimir Vasiliev (now – rector) and Vladimir
Parfenov (now – dean of the IT & Programming faculty) in 1991
• Goal:
– To find high school students performing best in mathematics, physics and informatics
– To train them to be high-class software engineers
• Competition-based education
• Best coach in the world – Andrew Stankevich
• Traditions
18

19

• Pavel Mavrin – don’t stop when you lose
• Fedor Tsarev – find a good team
• Maxim Buzdalov – do not rest on laurels
20

21

• Best students are invited to work in the university after graduating
– Save the intellectual environment and traditions
– Teach students
– Do research
• IT companies sponsor them directly
– Save The Best initiative: savethebest.ru
• Mail.Ru Group, Yandex, Yota, Transas, JetBrains,
Speech Technology Center, eVelopers, DEVINO
Telecom
22

• ETH Zurich:
– 21 Nobel Prizes
– Never advanced to ACM ICPC World Finals before 2011
• University ITMO:
– Participates in ACM ICPC World Finals since 1995
– Four times ACM ICPC World Champions
• World Champions from University ITMO regularly come to ETH
Zurich for trainings
• Result – ETH Zurich team advanced to World Finals for the first time in the history
• Establishment of Software Engineering and Verification Chair in
University ITMO (head – Prof. Bertrand Meyer)
• Davos Informatics camps for high-school students
23

• Personal careers – a lot of opportunities
• For the university – Gennady Korotkevich, programming prodigy from Belarus
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich
– 5 gold medals at International Olympiad in Informatics for high-school students, 3 absolute first places
– Highest rated coder at Codeforces and TopCoder
– Now – first-year student of University ITMO
– Hope to win two more World Championships 
24

Contact information: pavel.mavrin@gmail.com
fedor.tsarev@gmail.com
mbuzdalov@gmail.com
St. Petersburg National Research University of IT,
Mechanics and Optics
Computer Technologies Department
Russia, St. Petersburg, Kronverksky pr. 49

• http://neerc.ifmo.ru/trains
• Coach – Andrew Stankevich
– President of Russia Award in the area of education (2003),
– Award for Great Contribution to Spreading
ACM ICPC in Europe (2004)
– Best Coach Award (2009)
• Five hour trainings two times a week
• About 70% of first and second year students of Computer Technologies
Department take part in trainings
• Special training camps in winter and summer in Petrozavodsk

Russian Olympiads in Informatics for high-school students
• All-Russia center for Olympiads in Informatics at Computer Technologies
Department
• Individual Olympiad (ROI, IOI-style, since 1989)
• Team Olympiad (ICPC-style, http://neerc.ifmo.ru/school , since 2000)
• Internet Olympiads ( http://neerc.ifmo.ru/school/io ):
– Team (ICPC-style, since 2005)
• Basic level
• Advanced level
– Individual (IOI-style)
• Basic level (since 2009)
• Advanced level (since 2006)
– CD “Programming with champions!” (yet – only in Russian)
• Basic level of Internet Olympiads
• 50 problems with solutions
• Personal testing system
27

• Bioinformatics
– Algorithms for analyzing large amounts of genomic data
– Genome assembly algorithms
– Spin-off company “Cloud Genomics”
• Software Engineering
– Software verification
– Automated programming using artificial intelligence and machine learning
28