The Saarbrücken team secures a place in the world championship, ranking among the top three German teams.
The winning team of Saarland University receiving their medals. Photo: MPI-INF
The team from Saarland University won a silver medal at the European Championship of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). This achievement secured the team, jointly trained by Saarland University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, a spot at the world championship, which will take place in September 2025 in Baku, Azerbaijan. With this Saarland University has qualified for the world finals for the third consecutive time, making it the only German university represented at all ICPC World Finals in the past three years.
The ICPC Europe Championship is the most prestigious European tournament of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) and determines which teams qualify for the world finals. The ICPC is regarded as the world’s largest programming competition, with over 50,000 participants from more than 3,000 universities across 111 countries each year. This year’s European Championship took place from February 28 to March 2, 2025, at the University of Porto in Portugal. A total of 53 universities participated, including five from Germany, of which only three qualified for the world finals.
The team and coaches: Simon Schwarz, Dominykas Marma, Majid Garoosi, Yasmine Briefs, and Egor Gorbachev (left to right). Photo: MPI-INF
Competitive programming is a mind sport in which teams, each consisting of three members, must solve a series of complex algorithmic problems and implement their solutions on a single computer within five hours. This year’s challenges included optimizing Morse codes and determining the optimal layout of city parks. The Saarland University team, consisting of Yasmine Briefs, Majid Garoosi, and Dominykas Marma, placed sixth, earning a silver medal (places 1–2: gold, 3–6: silver, 7–12: bronze). Their placement among the medalists secured them direct qualification for the world finals.
Competitive programming has been a joint initiative of Saarland University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics for many years. Students are supported through targeted preparation courses, such as the Competitive Programming lecture, taught by Professor Markus Bläser (Saarland University), Professor Karl Bringmann (Saarland University), Dr. Martin Bromberger (MPI-INF), and Professor Christoph Weidenbach (MPI-INF), with assistance from former competition participants. The travel expenses for the competitions are funded by the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and organized in cooperation with the university. This year, Egor Gorbachev (Saarland University), himself a highly successful ICPC participant in 2023 and 2024, and Simon Schwarz (MPI-INF) coached the team.
Editor:
Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Phone: +49 681 9325 5409
Email: pzs@mpi-inf.mpg.de