UOM excels in programming skills

The Moratuwa University students have shown that Sri Lankans can match and surpass the world's best programmers with their exceptional intellectual performance. This is proved by the results of the recent coding competition conducted this year by the 160-country member Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). This year the University made a marked improvement over its successes in the past two years as evidenced by the detailed results of the competition.

Called IEEEXtreme it is a global challenge in which teams of student members compete in a 24-hour time span to solve a set of programming problems. This year 1555 teams from 65 countries participated in the competition organised by the IEEE, the world's premier technical professional society in the fields of electrical, electronics, and computer engineering, IEEEXtreme.

The Moratuwa University teams stood up to the task by one team becoming the runners-up and another being ranked ninth among the winners. The team 'CeylonSpiro' was the runners-up while the team "Selachimorpha" bagged the ninth winner position.

The University also added another plume to its cap by the record breaking number of teams with which it participated in the competition. Hundred three-member teams from the University IEEE Student Branch participated in the competition. This was almost three times last year's number and the largest ever contingent worldwide. Out of these teams not only were 10 teams in the top 100, but an amazing 30 teams were within the top 200. "I am extremely proud of this performance. Fifteen percent of the top teams are from the Moratuwa University. No other university anywhere can match this", IEEE Student Branch Counsellor Prof Sisil Kumarawadu commented.

Commenting on the tenacity of the participants IEEEXtreme 5.0 academic co-ordinator Prof. Gihan Dias said, "I was impressed that almost all the 300 participants stayed the course, until 5.30 a.m. on Sunday and submitted their answers to the problems".

The competition, much awaited for by the University's undergraduates, IEEEXtreme 5.0 commenced on October 22 at 5.30 a.m. local time, gained another achievement, i.e., being a great unifier. It united the competitors, organisers, academic and even non-academic staff into one body, always aspiring and offering their fullest contribution, to make the university proud.

Elaborating on the two teams mentioned above IEEE Sri Lanka Section Chairman Dr Rohan Munasinghe said that it was not surprising that the team 'CeylonSpiro' was on top of the rankings from the beginning.

"I'm not surprised. They were the same individuals who were the world champions in IEEEXtreme 3.0 - Varuna Jayasiri, Chethiya Abeysinghe and Lilantha Polpitiya," Dr. Munasinghe said.

All three of them are final year B.Sc. Engineering students. Lalintha is majoring in electrical engineering whereas Varuna and Chethiya are from electronics and telecommunication engineering. Varuna is an alumnus of Royal College, Colombo. Chethiya and Lalintha are from Maliyadeva College, Kurunegala.

All of them have experience in participating in coding competitions even from school age. The team "Selachimorpha", comprising Kirthevasan Kandasamy, Manuranga Perera and Maleen Abeydeera who are second and third year students, was ranked ninth.

With the interest increasing among the undergraduates, the University hopes for even wider participation in the future.