Author: Ahmet Ala

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ETH Dethroned SWERC 2023-24

During the last weekend of January, two teams from ETH Zürich, led by coaches Ahmet and Bernhard, participated in the ICPC Southwestern Europe Regional Contest held in Paris. The contest included 108 teams from 65 institutions spanning France, Israel, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.

True to the name, the dETHroners(Theodor, Paula, and Michal) dethroned the SWERC, achieving the gold medal and first place with 11 solved problems. This marked a historic moment for ETH, as our last first-place finish was 13 years ago.

doublETHink(Jasmin, Chris, and Ema) solved 8 problems and narrowly missed the bronze medal due to a slight time penalty.

Besides, doublETHink were the first team to solve the problem J, while dETHroners accomplished the same feat for problem G.

This performance qualified the dETHroners for the upcoming ICPC European Championship in Prague this March and the World Finals in Astana this September.

1 hour and 36 minutes to the end, the race for the second place heats up
Final Standings
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Swiss Subregional 2023-24

Swiss Subregional 2023-24 took place on December 9th at ETH, EPFL and USI. All three top positions within the top 3 were secured by students from ETH, with a total of six students from ETH achieving positions in the top 10. We have added it to Codeforces Gym for future training, more info can be found here.

Johannes maintaining “Balloon Distributor” and Bernhard managing 4 different contests
Konstantin blowing up balloons for “Guess Gauss”
Yuda and Mihnea trying to figure out how Ahmet mapped the seating plan
Balloon Squad continues their work
Bernhard checking if everything runs smoothly after answering every question with “Read the Statement”
Congratulations to Theodor, Paula and Michał for getting into Top 3

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ICPC Challenge Championship 2023

In late August, the ICPC hosted its first ICPC Challenge Championship powered by Huawei. Qualification for this event was earned through good placement in ICPC challenges held on Codeforces. Two students from ETH were invited to participate in the championship. Bernhard qualified by achieving second prize in the contest “Topology-Aware VM Placement”. Konstantin received an invitation as a coach and received an award for Outstanding Mentorship for his guidance to the ETH teams in the ICPC world finals.

Bernhard and Konstantin with Huawei HR Manager

The championship, held at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, brought together 58 contestants from around the world. The challenge focused on “Buffer Sharing and Pre-allocation for Multi-tenant Databases”, with Bernhard ranking 24th. Aside from the competition, participants enjoyed various activities such as a tour of Huawei’s campus & factories, as well as a meeting with Huawei’s CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei. Minutes of the meeting can be found here.

For those interested in upcoming ICPC challenges, announcements and details are regularly posted on Codeforces. These challenges differ from traditional ICPC contests, emphasizing a single optimization problem and are open to participants with no age or university restrictions.

Further Information on the ICPC Challenge Championship can be found here.