AUK Hosts First Kuwait National Collegiate Programming Contest

The American University of Kuwait's Sciences and Engineering Division hosted the 1st Kuwait National Collegiate Programming Contest - Q8CPC, on October 14 -16 2010 sponsored by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences - KFAS. 

Q8CPC is part of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) the world's oldest and most prestigious programming contest for universities. 

The competition was launched on October 14 with an opening ceremony, followed by teams' introduction and a practice session. Ten teams participated in total from the following four universities: Kuwait University with four teams, the American University of Kuwait (AUK) and Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) with two teams each, in addition to two teams from Arab Open University (AOU). 

The contest was held on October16, where the teams competed for five hours aiming to write software systems that solve as many problems as possible from the given problem set. Each team consists of three students collaborating on understanding, solving, and coding programs using a single computer. The contest tests the teams' abilities in problem solving, resource management and working under stress. 

The race was tight from the beginning of the contest. Different teams from all universities exchanged the top three positions throughout the five hours. The contest ended with three teams solving six out of the eight given problems. The top three teams were ranked according to the time taken to solve the problems. One of the teams from Kuwait University was ranked first, followed by a team from GUST with AUK grabbing the third position. A team from AOU solved 5 problems ranking fourth amongst the remaining seven teams. 

By organizing this contest, the American University of Kuwait aims at raising the awareness on the importance of such academic competitions giving students the chance to learn in a competitive yet collaborative environment that is hard to achieve in regular classroom setting. In addition, this competition encourages the participation of Kuwaiti universities in the ACM Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC) that has been annually held since 1998. This year the regional will be hosted by the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut this coming November where AUK plans to send two teams.
 

One of AUK's teams: Wael El-Hamady, Ali Taqi, and Omar El-Khatib
 

Group photo of Q8CPC participants and volunteers
 

AUK winning third place. Left to right: Dr. Ziad Najem Regional Contest Director, Omar El-Khatib contestant, Dr. Jassim Al-Bishara Director of Scientific Culture Division at Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), Dr. Shereef AbulMaati Division Head of the Sciences and Engineering Division at AUK, Dima AbuRshaid contest Manager and coach of AUK team, Dr. Nizar Hamza Dean of the Academic Affairs at AUK, Wael El-Hamady contestant, and Ali Taqi, contestant
 

GUST winning second place. Left to right bottom up: Dr. Ziad Najem Regional Contest Director, Dr. Jassim Al-Bishara Director of Scientific Culture Division at Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), Dr. Shereef AbulMaati Division Head of the Sciences and Engineering Division at AUK, Dr. Nizar Hamza Dean of the Academic Affairs at AUK, Shoug Al-Fadhli contestant, Reda Makarem contestant, Abdulraheem Taha, and Taher Ali coach
 

Team winning first place from Kuwait University. Left to Right: Dr. Ziad Najem Regional Contest Director, Husain BuHamad contestant, Al-Mazyad Abduljalil contestant, Dr. Jassim Al-Bishara Director of Scientific Culture Division at Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), Jafar Abdulrasoul contestant, Dr. Shereef AbulMaati Division Head of the Sciences and Engineering Division at AUK, Dr. Nizar Hamza Dean of the Academic Affairs at AUK, Dr. Bader Al-Bader coach