Qatar University’s Computing Club (QUCC) held its first and the biggest university-wide programming competition, QUCCC’22, with the aim to prepare QU programmers to represent the State of Qatar in international programming contests. QUCCC’22 was sponsored by the Qatari Ministry of Defense, Huawei, and Snoonu. The competitive spirit between the students lasted until the very last second. The end of the competition brought light to three teams with potential to represent Qatar in international programming competitions. The “Apes Stick Together” team got the 1^st place, while the 2^nd and 3^rd places were earned by “Hackerz” and “Badr” teams respectfully.

The competition was held on the 3^rd January 2022, and lasted for three days attracting over 100 QU competitive programmers, QU CSE Department, and sponsor’s representatives. The contest was organized to emphasize the importance of developing and enhancing the technical skills of university students. The core  QUCC organizing team included Ahmed Ashraf Abdou (President), Mahnoor Akhund (VP), Hani Jafer (Internal Relations Specialist), and Salha Al-Khayyat (Media Director).

Dr. Khaled Naji, Dean of the College of Engineering, said; “It was a pleasure to collaborate with QUCC to organize such programming competition, an educational program to stimulate the imagination of students, develop their skills, and encourage them to explore the broad possibilities of engineering and programming outside the scope of the classrooms to present different qualitative work in this field and in support of Qatar Vision 2030.”

Dr. Abdulla Al-Ali, Head of the CSE Department, stressed on the importance of this competition, which targets QU students to develop their skills and knowledge related to computing, in addition to graduating a generation of specialists in computer science and engineering, and providing the Qatari community with specialists in software developers, website designers, network engineers, and systems protection consultants.” He explained that the competition represents an opportunity to reveal students’ talents, creativity, and skills.

Mr. Abdullah Al Mulla, Director of Student Activities Department, pointed out that the students of QUCC took the initiative to organize such large-scale competition. “Through these initiatives and programs, students are able to highlight and refine their important technical abilities in the field of computing and their specialization, in addition to refining their personal and leadership skills, which will reflect positively on their academic aspect and student life.”, he said.

Henry Yee, Vice President of Huawei in the North Gulf, said: “We are proud to cooperate with one of the largest public universities in Qatar, which reflects our commitment to empowering ICT talent in Qatar, and supporting the country’s ambitious visions and plans in the digital transformation journey. We will continue our efforts in Huawei through open cooperation with our partners and joint work to build ecosystems for local ICT talent through our many initiatives, which include the ICT competition in the Middle East, Seeds for the Future and Huawei Academies that offer accredited certificates, and others in order to prepare tomorrow’s leaders”.