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Raul Garcia Hemonnet
Last weekend the VIII Edition of 'Ada Byron' took place, a competitive programming tournament that brought together teams from the 6 public universities of Madrid on the UPM campus. In a festive atmosphere, as usually happens in these meetings, one of the first-year teams that competed for the URJC took first place in its category, something that happened for the first time since the university began to participate in this contest .
“We have been first in the first year category, it is the first time we have won. It is an achievement”, says Jesús Sánchez-Oro, professor at the ETSII and coordinator of the Competitive Programming group at the URJC.
The CEAN team, which is the name of the group of winners, is made up of three 1st year Cybersecurity Engineering degree students: Marcelino Siles Rubia, Adán El Yaacoubi Ruano and Iván Sánchez Alvar.
Improve at all levels
In addition to the milestone of being the first in one of the competitions, the URJC teams have improved in all categories, achieving second, third and fourth place in the second year category, while the 4th year team has been ninth in your competition.
“All the teams have improved, the first ones have won and, for example, the second ones have been very good with their results. All the URJC teams have been, at least, in the middle of the table”, explains Sánchez-Oro.
growing interest
Competitive programming is experiencing a growing interest at URJC, "the group already has more than 200 students who train with us," explains the teacher. In addition, he has contacted a former student who has allowed Amazon teams, which have participated in world championships, to train URJC students.
This interest and motivation of the students has led to the resumption of an initiative to create a student association for Competitive Programming that began last year.
The next important event is the SWERC, an international competition that pits universities from southwestern Europe and other parts of the continent. This time it will be held in Milan at the end of April and it is a challenge for the group “it is a very competitive and complex event”, explains Sánchez-Oro. The teacher adds that, in this competition “being in the middle of the table would be a very important achievement. There are many universities that have this professionalized, it is not our case”.
Undoubtedly an opportunity for URJC students to show their skills in this discipline outside our borders and to continue overcoming challenges.