By successfully completing the 45th edition in Dhaka, the organizers expressed their commitment to develop a culture of solving problems for the welfare of humanity as a ‘human resource pool’ of programmers.
The participants made this pledge at a special press conference held at International Convention City Bashundhara (ICCB) Hall-1 Gul-e-Naksha on Thursday (November 10, 2022).
In the press conference, the main and significant issues of the ongoing ICPC World Finals Dhaka were presented. Meanwhile, the contestants were busy solving the problem in hall number 4 of the same floor. A team of three university students each sitting in front of a PC in a small booth. Once they solve the problem, they are given a colorful balloon.
The competition started at 11 am and lasted till 4 pm. The ICPC Foundation President William B. Poucher started the ICPC 45th World Finals Special Press Conference after 12:00 noon. He said, ‘We started the journey of organizing the World Finals in Dhaka six years ago, today it is really happening. To me it is wonderful and joyful. ICPC is the world’s largest problem solving organization. In the future world, big problems will have to be solved by computer programming. Those who participate in ICPC are the best programmers in the world. Their talent will be useful for humanity.’
The University of Asia Pacific (UAP) is the host University of ICPC. Professor Kamrul Ahsan, Vice-Chancellor of the University and Director of ICPC Dhaka said, ‘This competition is being held in Bangladesh as the fourth country in the Asian continent. Which is our biggest achievement as a country. Before this, the finals were held in Japan, China and Thailand. He mentioned UAP former Vice-chancellor late national professor Dr. Jamilur Reza Chowdhury as the visionary of this event.
Bangladesh Computer Council Executive Director Ranjit Kumar, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Additional Secretary Naveed Shafiullah, ICPC 2022 World Finals Director Michael J. Donahue, sponsor Huawei Vice President of Communications Vicky Zhang and Jet Brain Senior Vice President Andrei Ivanov also spoke at the press conference. The press conference was moderated by Lusa Mirza.
Today 12 programming problems or questions were asked for the final round teams. Last year’s gold medal winning team, Seoul National University of South Korea, tackled one of the first questions in the competition. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) of the United States was ahead by solving 10 problems as of writing this report (3 o’clock). It was followed by Peking University in China by solving nine.
Highlighting the benefits of organizing the ICPC World Finals Dhaka, Mr. Mohammad Naveed Shafiullah, Additional Secretary, ICT Division said, “To create a human resource pool for the digital world, we need to inculcate a culture of problem solving in the young generation. To this end, the ICT Division has taken timely initiatives and recently we have included problem solving skills and coding in the national curriculum for primary schools.”
BCC Executive Director Ranjit Kumar said, “What you see here now at this event, even the wonderful atmosphere of the competition venue is the result of hard work which started in 2017. Although the operational planning and preparations started last year, we held hundreds of meetings, both face-to-face and online, to execute the event.”
This year’s ICPC finale will end with a closing ceremony at the ICCB in the evening. There the results will be announced and the prize distribution will continue.
