Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar captures second place in the IEEEXtreme competition

Senior Computer Science major Hatem Alismail, junior Computer Science major Rishav Bhowmick and robotics Ph.D. candidate Justin Carlson comprised the winning team.

IEEEXtreme is a global programming competition that tests the players' problem-solving abilities to the limit by taking them on a daylong journey of finding the best solutions to various problems while competing against teams from all over the world.

This year 130 teams from 33 countries, including Portugal, Canada, Iran, Italy, France and Japan, competed. The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) professional organisation holds the event each year.

The teams all started the competition at the same time, which was 3 a.m. in Qatar, and worked steadily for 24 hours. Complex contest problems were released periodically throughout the competition and teams had to correctly solve as many as they could in the 24-hour period.

Carnegie Mellon Qatar's team secured second place by solving 12 of the 16 problems. The team from University of North Texas was the only team across the globe to beat Carnegie Mellon Qatar.

"The competition was really fun. It was challenging to try to think of solutions to the various problems," says Hatem Alismail, senior Computer Science major at Carnegie Mellon Qatar and team member. "Taking part in this type of competition changes the way you think of problems. Sometimes a problem can seem very complex but when you take time to work it through you realize that the best solution is often the most simple."

The entire IEEEXtreme competition was done online and teams had no idea how any of the other teams were doing, which Alismail says added to the excitement of the challenge. "We really never thought we'd win, especially since we are the first students from the Gulf Region to take part in the competition."