From January, 29 till February, 8 Petrozavodsk State University is hosting the Winter Programming Camp where the top-rank student programming teams train for the International Collegiate Programming Contest. Over 180 students (54 teams) take part in the camp and represent the universities of Russia, Belorussia, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

At the opening ceremony the President of PetrSU Victor Vasiliev addressed to the participants with a welcoming speech: “Dear students, we are very happy to see you in our university at the programming camp, an intellectual competition of international level. It is the 14^th camp already. You will have to work hard. Make the most of your potential, do your best and then you will achieve amazing results!”

“Holding programming camps is the old tradition of Petrozavodsk State University. It is not just the university’s brand, but the Karelian one, too. It is wonderful that student programmers come to PetrSU from other cities of Russia, and from abroad as well. This year we have many foreign participants. I wish luck to all the contestants! And mostly, I wish you all to achieve the victory over yourself, become better than the last time and make progress,” said the Advisor to the Rector, the programmer of the first generation, Natalia Ruzanova.

“We are participating in the camp for the third time. PetrSU Programming Camp is a well-known event among programmers of all universities. We are always happy to come to Petrozavodsk; it’s very exciting to be here. We always try to perform better and better, this camp is a great opportunity to train for the World Finals,” said the members of the teams from Saint Petersburg National Research Academic University and Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod.

The students from the Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan) also shared their impressions: “It has become a good tradition at our university to send students to train at the camp of Petrozavodsk State University. We take part both in the Summer and the Winter Camps. We are a little nervous. We really like it here at PetrSU. During the contest the competitive spirit is high, just as at the World Finals, all the participants take the competition very seriously. The Camp at PetrSU helps to train for the International Collegiate Programming Contest, besides you can share your experience with other participants, watch them solving the problems”.

“It is a very good event, the teams are strong, and you can learn a lot. The teams from around the world come here and solve challenging problems. The level of the competition is very high. We are eager to take part in the International Collegiate Programming Contest. We stay calm and see this Camp as an opportunity to train,” noted the members of the teams of Lviv University (Lviv, Ukraine), Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin (Ekaterinburg), Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics.

In the framework of the Camp the students will compete for the Head of the Republic Cup in Programming. This competition has become some kind of the “primaries” of the International Collegiate Programming Contest. Since 2004, the winners of the Head of the Republic Cup have won the International Collegiate Programming Contest eight times, and the participants of the contest are always among the prize-winners.

The contest is a two-tiered competition held in accordance with the regulations of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. There is a winner and prize-winners. The team that solves the most problems in the given time and has the least penalty time becomes the winner. If several teams solve the same number of problems and have the same amount of penalty time, then the team that was the first to submit the last solved problem becomes the winner.

The winner is awarded with the Cup engraved with “To the winner of the 2016 Head of the Republic of Karelia Cup in Programming”; the prize-winners and their coaches receive winner’s certificates and valuable prizes.

The Head of the Republic of Karelia Cup in Programming is one of the Karelian brands that make our Republic one of the leading regions of the Russian Federation in development of modern information technologies and support of gifted youth.

The awarding ceremony will take place on February, 8 in the assembly hall of PetrSU.