Qatar University (QU) students from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in the College of Engineering won the overall ‘Relentless Programmers Award’ at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) – Oman Collegiate Programming Contest held at Sultan Qaboos University Oman recently. Two QU teams participated in the contest with the men’s team finishing fifth and the women’s team 12th among 30 teams from various GCC universities, the QU said today. The men’s team comprised junior engineering students Abdelrazek Ibrahim, Abdelrahman Shouman and Kariem Fahmi while Abeer Al Marridi, Aya Hussein and Hagar Hussein made up the women’s team. The students, participating in an ACM contest for the first time, were accompanied by their coaches, QU Assistant Professor of Computer Science Dr Somaya Al Maadeed and Engineer Khalid A. A. Abualsaud. On the first day of the contest, the students took part in a practice test on two questions and trained on the test system to familiarize themselves with the contest tasks. The following day, over five hours, they participated in the competition in which they were given nine questions to solve. The men’s team solved four questions, placing fifth among two teams from Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar, one from Sultan Qaboos University, and one from Arab Open University, Kuwait. Commenting on the students’ achievement, CSE Head Professor Sebti Foufou said, “Our students did very well and gained invaluable experience from competing in this event. At the department, we ensure that our students are provided with optimum opportunities to practice what they learned in the classroom. The contest not only provided this opportunity but also allowed the students to demonstrate other life skills such as teamwork, competitive spirit, and interpersonal communication which will serve them well in their future personal and professional endeavors.”