Three student teams represented Imperial at the annual North Western Europe Regional Programming Contest, which was held in Linköping, Sweden.

The Imperial teams were selected based on their performance in the recent UKIEPC (http://ukiepc.nwerc.eu/) and participated in regular training sessions.

With 95 participating teams from nine countries a new attendance record was set. As usual, teams of three students were given five hours to solve eleven algorithmic problems using a single computer without Internet access.

All Imperial teams ranked in the top half of the scoreboard (http://www.nwerc.eu/scoreboard/). The two newcomer teams achieved a good result, with CodeNinjas solving four problems (Rank 47) and Y U NO ACC solving five problems (Rank 33).

Solving eight problems, the DoCtors (Andrei Antonescu, Mihai Popa, Yordan Chaparov) secured a Silver Medal (Rank 7) for Imperial. The top three teams from universities in Denmark (9 solved), Germany (9) and Sweden (8) qualified for the World Finals, which will be held in Morocco next year.

Next to the actual contest, the weekend program included talks by the event sponsors Microsoft and ING, as well as guided tours to the city center of Linköping and the Swedish Air Force Museum.

The trip was funded through the Corporate Partnership Program (CPP) of the Department of Computing. The teams were coached and accompanied by Christian Ledig and Andreas Schuh, two RAs in the Department of Computing.