Programming Champion | Thien Udomsrirungruang

Thien Udomsrirungruang and his teammates receive gold medals at ICPC.

We are pleased to share the success of Thien Udomsrirungruang (2020 CompSci), a Keble third-year, who, along with his teammates, propelled the Oxford student team 'NewJeans' to victory at the Northwestern European regional leg of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).

The ICPC is the world’s most prestigious competitive programming contest for students, involving solving problems in a fast-paced environment: “like a sprint relay: a dozen programming problems, small but challenging, to be solved as quickly as possible, within five hours, in a team of three,” said Bartek Klin, coach for the Oxford teams and Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford.

The Northwestern European Regional Contest (NWERC), saw a total of 143 teams from 64 universities across 13 countries vying for the top spot. Oxford University's representation included four formidable teams, with 'NewJeans' emerging as the undisputed champions. Thien, alongside teammates Viktor Kozhuharov (Magdalen 2020 CompSci) and Harris Leung (Merton 2020 Maths & CompSci), demonstrated an exceptional performance from start to finish. The team's victory has secured their position in the prestigious International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals in Kazakhstan in 2024.

‘NewJeans’ working through a problem at the Northwestern European Regional Contest

Thien explains: “The ICPC is an interesting contest format, as it requires a lot of teamwork and communication for teams to perform well. All three of us on the team are experienced competitive programmers and so a big focus for us was making sure that we didn’t make strategical errors on contest day. I think we did very well in that regard - our practice sessions before the contest weekend helped with this by allowing us to rehearse our procedures.”

Regarding the future, “The World Finals in September will be an opportunity for us to compete with some of the very best competitive programming teams in the world, who have done well in other similar regional competitions. It will be a tough challenge, but I am very excited to see how we stack up, and we will be training hard for it!”

Thien's exceptional performance and the success of 'NewJeans' echo the commitment and excellence nurtured at Oxford and Keble. As we eagerly anticipate the ICPC World Finals in 2024, we extend our congratulations to Thien Udomsrirungruang, Viktor Kozhuharov, and Harris Leung, as well as the entire Oxford programming community, for their achievements, and wish them the best of luck in the World championships.

Read more in the full article published on the Department of Computer Science website.