The university’s team Game of Nolife won Western European programming contest for students

In the finals in Thailand in spring 2016, the students from the University of Helsinki will face the best teams in the world.

The University of Helsinki has won the inter-university NWERC 2015 programming contest that was held in Linköping recently. It was attended by 95 teams from Western Europe. The Game of Nolife team from the University of Helsinki consisted of computer-science and maths students Tuukka Korhonen, Olli Hirviniemi and Otte Heinävaara.

-It feels great, especially since there were teams from strong universities like KTH in Stockholm, Oxford, and Cambridge, says Antti Laaksonen, the coach for the winning team.

The topic of the contest is the programming of algorithms, and the contestants have to solve a number of difficult programming problems. They are given five hours to solve them. Each team has one computer at their disposal for programming the algorithm.

The Game of Nolife team prepared for the November contest in Linköping with a training camp at the MIPT university in Moscow. The ten-day camp was organised right before the contest, and it helped the contestants especially with solving the geometric problems.

-The level of contest programming in Russia is very high, and the team had the opportunity to compete against some of the best Russian teams during the camp, Laaksonen says.

The finals will be held in Thailand in May 2016. The teams in the finals have won regionals around the world. The goal of Game of Nolife is to win a medal, which will require a lot of training during the spring.

Main page of the contest: http://www.nwerc.eu/

Results: http://www.nwerc.eu/scoreboard/

Image: The Game of Nolife team, left to right Otte Heinävaara, Tuukka Korhonen, and Olli Hirviniemi.

 

Image: Pauliina Pajunen

Text: Minna Meriläinen-Tenhu

Translation: Marina Kurtén

Created date

03.12.2015 - 15:49

Application to Finnish computer science programmes 16 Mar-6 Apr 2016

 
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Photo: Veikko Somerpuro 2016

 

International BOI 2016 programming contest at the Department of Computer Science

 

The best young programmers around the Baltic Sea will compete in May 2016 at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki in Baltic Olympiad in Informatics 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

Baltic Olympiad in Informatics (BOI) is a programming contest for countries around the Baltic Sea. The contest has been organized since 1995. This year BOI will take place in Helsinki May 11-15. The contest venue is the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki.

Unique open online programming course starts again at Helsinki University

This is the fifth year in a row that the massive open online course (MOOC) will start at the University of Helsinki. Finns can take the course just for fun, as a part of their upper-secondary education, or even as an entrance exam to the university.

The course is free of charge, and it is so basic that students with no experience of programming can follow it.

Sasu Tarkoma new head of the Department of Computer Science

Since Jukka Paakki announced that he will step down from the post of head of the department on 1 January 2016, Professor Sasu Tarkoma has been elected the new head for the period 1 January 2016-31 December 2017. There were a total of 7 applicants for the position, out of whom the rector decided to appoint Tarkoma on the basis of the proposal by the dean of the Faculty of Science.

The staff of the department would like to congratulate Sasu and wish him success in his new duties. This is a good opportunity to ask our new leader some questions.