The Técnico students Alberto Pacheco, Gonçalo Paredes and Henrique Navas are “happy and satisfied” for their victory at the Inter-University programming marathon, held on 12th October, at Técnico. The Técnico team stood out among the other 23 teams because they were able to solve the 10 problems proposed.

Alberto Pacheco, Mathematics and Applications MSc student, Gonçalo Paredes, Information Systems and Computer Engineering MSc student and Henrique Navas, Applied Mathematics and Computation BSc student had already participated in this marathon. To prepare themselves for this programming contest, the team worked 5 hours/week and solved the 10 problems using the programming languages: C, C++, Java and Python 3, in just 5 hours (contest length). The team that ranked 2nd managed to solve only 7 problems.

This victory will allow the Técnico team to participate in the Southwestern Europe Regional Contest (SWERC) 2019-2020, the South-Western Europe Regional Contest for the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the premier global programming competition conducted by and for the world’s universities. “We will do our best”, says Henrique Navas. “We can achieve good results but something can go wrong, so we shouldn’t have too high expectations”, points out the student.

Henrique Navas has no doubt that participating in MIUP is a valuable input for his professional life. “Some companies value this kind of experience”, he says. This summer, Gonçalo Paredes got an internship at Facebook, largely due to his remarkable performance in such competitions.