The first of December 2018 was day full of excitement for the Computer Science students at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering (SBASSE) as IEEE LUMS Student Chapter organised CodinGuru 2018, where 52 teams from various universities from across Pakistan participated.
Aspiring Computer Scientists from LUMS, FAST, PUCIT, BNU, COMSATS and FCCU took part in an exciting competition, which comprised five interesting problems to solve i.e. Food distribution, Dam Water Storage, Introvert Computer Scientist, Chess King and Coloured Balls Sequence. The teams were allowed to use any of the three languages namely C++, Java and Python and automated checking was used with PC square.
The judges of the competition were Computer Science Juniors at LUMS, Aafaq Sabir, Taimoor Ali, Saad Khan, Soban Ali, Naima Samreen and Azan Bin Zahid. The competition commenced with the registration of the 52 teams and a brief on the rules and regulations. Testing software, PC2 was handed over to the teams and the marking scheme was explained.
The teams “Nemesis” and “Hackermen” had a strong competition right from start and the hustle was increased by the tickle of live score board. Eventually, after a hectic competition Team Nemesis made it to the top of scoreboard. The results were compiled and Dr. Arif Zaman presented a cash prize of PKR 30,000 to the winner Nemesis which included team members, Waqar Ahmad and Muhammad Hasan (PUCIT). Shields were presented to 1st Runner Up, Team Hackermen, Ammar Tahir and Abdul Mannan (LUMS) and the 2nd Runner Up, Team StrawHats, Usama Ikram and Junaid Haris (PUCIT). Certificates were presented to all participants by the judges.
CodinGuru is a coding competition, arranged with the objective to promote coding and computer science in local community and to conduct a state-of-the-art coding competition at LUMS (in collaboration with the Computer Science Department, LUMS).
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the World’s largest organisation for the advancement of technology. Over 125 years old, it boasts a huge collection of resources on engineering and educational services for its members. The IEEE LUMS Student Chapter regularly arranges technology talks, workshops and student competitions.
Special guests at CodinGurus included Dr. Arif Zaman and Dr. Muhammad Hamad Alizai. Dr. Zaman is a Pakistani mathematician, an academic scientist and a professor of Statistics and Mathematics at LUMS. Before joining LUMS in 1994, he served the Statistics Department at Purdue University and Florida State University. His publications include, The Annals of Probability, Mathematics of Computation, Journal of Applied Probability, and Journal of Statistical Computation. Dr. Alizai is Assistant Professor, Computer Science at LUMS. He has over 10 years of experience in Germany and Pakistan as a researcher, software engineer, and technical lead both in industrial and academic settings. He was awarded a DAAD grant to greenify older buildings in emerging countries (2019-21).
The event was greatly successful in achieving its main objective, which was to promote coding and to motivate programmers. The event highlighted the potential and skills of the students and the need for such big events to be organised in other cities of the country so that the next generation of programmers can be groomed for emerging fields in the world.
