Researchers from the GRAFO group and ETSII launch a competitive programming course
The activity, organized by the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering (ETSII), is oriented towards a discipline where several teams compete to solve the greatest number of programming problems in the shortest possible time.
To do this, new programming techniques such as advanced sorting algorithms or dynamic programming will be shown, and advanced data structures will be introduced to improve the efficiency of the code. This training will help our students in future programming competitions such as AdaByron or SWERC, increasing their programming skills to adapt to the innovations of the future.
Competitive programming, at the forefront of programming
Large companies such as Google or Facebook, among others, develop competitive programming contests and give this discipline a vital importance in the development of the technologies of the future. A clear example is # Codejam2018, one of the most prominent events, along with ACM ICPC, CodeChef, Codeforces, IEEEXtreme Programming Competition, TopCoder Marathon Matches, among others.
According to Estefanía Martín Barroso, Deputy Director of Research and Promotion of the school, the students “will learn a series of advanced programming techniques that are not seen during the career and that we have verified that many companies ask for when interviewing students. In addition, students notably improve their skills as programmers ”. Jesús Sánchez Oro, professor at the ETSII, adds that the course “will undoubtedly allow our students to be able to make better codes and in less time compared to those of other universities, being able to solve problems of interest to companies. The proof is that in these contests companies such as Google or Microsoft usually participate as sponsors that offer well-paid contracts to the best participants.
The course begins the last week of January and ends at the end of March, with a duration of two hours per week. Students enrolled in ETSII degrees will be able to access this training for free.
Nicolás Rodríguez Uribe
Phd in Artificial Intelligence
Nicolás Rodríguez Uribe graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in 2015. Subsequently, he completed a Master’s Degree in Decision Systems Engineering in 2018 and obtained his Doctorate in Artificial Intelligence from the same university in 2022. His main research interests focus on heuristics and metaheuristics, combinatorial optimization, trajectory algorithms, genetic algorithms, and multi-objective problems. He is a member of the high-performance research group in optimization algorithms (GRAFO) at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Most of his publications deal with the development of heuristic and metaheuristic procedures to solve complex optimization problems.