Russian Programming Student Wins TopCoder Challenge

TopCoder, Inc., the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development, held its annual competition for higher education students worldwide in November. This year the TopCoder Collegiate Challenge assembled the best and brightest technical students in the world in the premier event for software development collaboration and competition, and culminated with four intensive days of competition for the 120 top semi-finalists in a dynamic culminating event in Orlando, FL.

Representing 26 countries from around the world, 120 students flew to Disney World for the TopCoder Collegiate Challenge to compete live in the tournament's semifinals and the championship round on November 2nd at Disney's Contemporary Resort. Competitors qualified to be flown to the TopCoder Collegiate Challenge by earning a top global ranking in online qualifying rounds of competition involving more than 3,200 members earlier this summer. Five students achieved the title of TopCoder Collegiate Challenge Champion for 2007 and TopCoder Algorithm Competition Champion is Petr Mitrichev from Moscow State University.

Petr earned recognition as the fastest and most accurate coder, by solving word problems of increased difficulty through written software code and withstanding challenges by competitors seeking to crack, or break the code by finding bugs. It has been second year in a row that the Russian student becomes the winner of the TopCoder world championship.

Regular strong performance of Russian students at world's programming contests (ACM Championships, TopCoder Challenge) is an excellent proof of the brilliant engineering education system in the country which contributes a lot to the success of the Russian high-tech and ICT Industry.