Proposal Title
          TOPDEI – Training for Competitive Programming at DEI
          Champion and Proponents
          Luís Paquete (Associate Professor), Carlos M. Fonseca (Associate Professor), Alexandre D.
          Jesus (PhD Student), and Gonçalo Lopes (PhD Student)
          Description
          We propose a set of activities that will allow the Department of Informatics Engineering
          at   the   University   of   Coimbra   to  prepare  a   number   of   students   for   competitive
          programming in a regular, intensive and sustained way. It is our goal to build and lead a
          number   of   outperforming   teams   for   national   and   international   programming
          competitions. We expect these teams to become  role models for other university
          students by bringing more attention to the relevance of good programming and problem-
          solving skills.
          During the first semester of each academic year, we would like to attract students that
          are willing to invest time in learning about algorithms and programming, and training for
          competitions. We propose to organize several internal programming competitions open
          to all students from the University of Coimbra. Students that perform well, and are willing
          to learn more and compete, will be invited to participate in the training sessions.
          The training sessions will target two different types of competitions requiring different
          problem-solving skills. For competitions  of the International Collegiate Programming
          Contest (ICPC) type, the teams will learn about the main data structures and algorithmic
          approaches to problem solving, such as backtracking, branch and bound, dynamic
          programming and greedy algorithms, and particular algorithms for applications such as
          graph and computational geometry problems. For the Google Hash Code and similar
          competitions, the teams will learn about the main heuristic paradigms, from constructive
          heuristics and local search to more advanced techniques such as meta-heuristics. In
          parallel, the teams will discuss efficient implementations of these algorithms and develop
          effective strategies for teamwork. Theory contents will be complemented with intensive
          practice of solving programming competition exercises. Formally, these training sessions
          will take the shape of two non-degree courses in which the students must enrol. During
          these  courses, the students will be organized into teams and actively participate in
          programming competitions and team-building events. In addition to the training sessions
          and internal competitions, we propose a 3-day Programming Camp  away from  the
          University as well as to organize the Inter-University Programming Marathon (MIUP, in
          2022 and 2013), the most important national programming competition, which involves
          students from all Portuguese universities. 
          As students complete the training courses, they will be invited to actively participate in
          the setup of training sessions for newcomers as well as in mentoring activities. We plan
          to bring some these activities to secondary schools, and to open the training courses to
          professional programmers from Industry from the second year of this project onward.
        Key Questions:
        1. How will this project inspire people into the future? 
        Through the participation in competitions, such as ICPC and Google HashCode, our students
        will be in contact with the best programmers of the world. This will encourage them to raise
        their own bar, and to aspire at being better programmers. Through internal competitions
        and training sessions, students will become aware that, in order to obtain excellent results,
        commitment alone is not enough. A hard-working attitude and a strong sense of duty with
        respect to individual and team goals are also required. The programming camp experience
        will inspire students to bond within and among the teams, to respect and accept individual
        differences, to trust in their own skills, and to be open to contributing to the community.
        Participation in this project will also encourage them to seek positions at Industry that value
        this experience. The exposure to advanced subjects that are not taught at BSc or MSc level
        may also motivate them to pursue an academic career.
        2. How will this project promote high standards and excellence?
        The project aims to prepare students for the most challenging programming competitions,
        which, in itself, sets the high standards to which we would like to adhere. We plan to attract
        the best students to this project, taking into account not only their performance at internal
        competitions and past experience, but also their motivation and willingness to learn and
        make the effort. Luís Paquete and Carlos Fonseca are both active researchers in the field of
        algorithms and heuristics, and have experience of preparing and organizing programming
        competitions. Alexandre Jesus has great experience of programming competitions, and his
        team qualified for the 2018 Google Hash Code finals in Dublin, from a total of more than
        5000 teams. Gonçalo Lopes has also participated in several national and international
        programming competitions. The training sessions will consist of discussing and solving the
        most challenging problems from past ICPC and Google Hash Code editions. A number of
        internationally renowned experts on programming and algorithms will be invited to teach
        some of the contents.  
        3. How will this project take people out of their comfort zone?
        The competitive programming activity  naturally  provides an environment "out of the
        comfort zone", both for the students that participate and for the trainers that coach the
        teams. From the students perspective, this activity involves studying topics that go beyond
        what is taught in the usual curriculum at the University, training intensively, discussing
        solutions with others, solving programming challenges that are far from being trivial, and
        working in a team under great pressure. From the trainers perspective, training activities
        require  maintaining   an   in-depth   and   up-to-date   knowledge   of   various   algorithmic
        techniques and programming languages, preparing a large amount of content and many
        problems for the training sessions at a demanding pace, and motivating teams of students
        with a very competitive profile.
        4. How will this project promote giving back and growth feedback 
        loops?
        Giving back is expected to arise throughout this project in several ways. We plan to invite
        the students that complete a full year of training sessions to contribute to the setup of
        internal competitions for the following year, to propose new contents for the training
        sessions, and to act as mentors for the newcomers. We also plan to bring some of these
        activities to secondary schools in Coimbra  and beyond  by  promoting competitions and
        programming workshops, with senior students actively participating in mentoring, teaching,
        and organization tasks. In addition, after the first year, we would like to open the training
        sessions to professionals at Industry with the aim of contributing to making the programme
        self-sustainable in the long run.
        The participation of female students and international students is likely to offer the greatest
        amplification potential, and will be actively promoted without deviating from the goal of
        making the programme available to all.  Finally, good performance in programming
        competitions impacts the University as a whole, and attracts great interest from national
        media, bringing more attention to programming activities, and to IT in general.
          Video
          In preparation.