Four LAU MEPI TL Students Score First and Fourth Place at The Lebanese Collegiate Programming Competition

For the 11th year in a row, The Lebanese Collegiate Programming Competition (LCPC) gathered 40 teams from 11 universities across Lebanon to take part in the algorithmic programming contest for college students. This year, the event has been organized by the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Beirut Arab University on October 4-5, 2019 and this year’s edition witnessed a larger number of participants from LAU MEPI TL students.

Ali Ayash from Lebanon, Amer Haj Ahmed from Syria, both majoring in Computer Science and another LAU student, formed a team called ‘Fast and Fourier’; on the other hand Amir Najjar from Syria and Nofal Belgasium from Libya, also majoring in Computer Science joined forces with another LAU colleague to form the team called ‘Smurphs’.

The two teams representing LAU separately were given a set of 13 problems from the domain of computing and were asked to come up with innovative solutions and translating them into programming language within a given period of time using their creativity and innovation while maintaining their ability to perform under pressure.

Using their strong pre-requisite computing practices and strong analytical thinking, ‘Fast and Fourier’ team led by Ayash and Ahmed were able to solve 11 out of the 13 problems in 1127 minutes through creating a collection of algorithms and data structures and the team succeeded in securing the first place in the contest.

Whereas ‘Smurphs’ team solved 8 of the 13 given problems in 750 minutes and ranked fourth in the quiz. As a consequence, both teams were qualified to participate in the regional Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC), to participate later on in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) should they win in the ACPC.

Year after year, LAU MEPI students are benefiting from the MEPI program that enables them to nurture their leadership abilities, analytical and problem-solving skills to better serve their communities in the near future.