A team of computer science students from Carnegie Mellon Qatar took first place at the Qatar Collegiate Programming Contest 2014, held at Qatar University this March.

The competition was organized by Qatar University’s Computing Club, together with the university’s Computer Science and Engineering Department and ictQatar’s Digital Incubation Centre.

Twenty-nine teams from CMU-Q, Qatar University, College of North Atlantic-Qatar and Texas A&M at Qatar participated, attempting to solve 10 programming problems in the shortest time while honing their computer science skills. All of the five CMU-Q teams made it into the top 10.

“I am even more proud that our students were all freshmen or sophomores from computer science, information systems and business administration,” said Thierry Sans, assistant professor of computer science.

Dilsher Ahmed, Naassih Gopee and John Naguib of the winning team “NB-Hard” received a cash prize and an invitation to a summer training program at the Digital Incubation Centre.

Three CMU-Q teams also competed at the Gulf Programming Contest organized by the American University of Dubai, UAE last week. Teams Brainiacs, NB-Hard and Tasty Brownies ranked 2nd, 4th and 26th respectively. More than 50 teams from around the Gulf region competed.