The 2025 ICPC Asia Hong Kong Regional Contest Hosted by the Department of CSE and ICPC

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) proudly co-organized the 2025 ICPC Asia Hong Kong Regional Contest with the ICPC Foundation on 29–30 November 2025. The event drew 126 official teams and 10 observer teams from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Mongolia to the HKUST campus. Over two packed days of registration, career fair activities, a warm-up session, and the five-hour regional contest at HKUST, it showcased the region's strongest student programmers and highlighted HKUST's role as a leading hub for computing education and research.

Regional Champions and Medal Tally

"Naive Birds" from Peking University emerged as contest champion, followed by "DeepSleep" from Fudan University and "Stella Primus" from Shanghai Jiao Tong University as first and second runner-up respectively, after navigating a demanding problem set under ICPC regional rules. In total, 13 teams received gold medals, 26 teams earned silver, and 39 teams took bronze, reflecting the performance of all effective teams that successfully solved at least one problem during the contest.

Strong Showing by HKUST Teams

HKUST fielded multiple official teams in the regional, with "HKUST1" (Taimas Korganbayev, Mukhammadarif Sakhmoldin and Raiymbek Baishuak) and "HKUST5" (Chan Ho Yin, Awadalla bdelrahman HossamEldin A. A. and Vu Duy Tung) both achieving bronze-medal performances on the final scoreboard. The results underline the steady progress of the HKUST ACM team under the supervision of Dr. Qifeng Chen, which continues to nurture student talent through regular practices and contests.

Contest Environment and Problem Setting

The contest ran on a unified programming environment based on Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS with a suite of standard editors, IDEs, and languages including C, C++, Java, Python, and Kotlin, with submissions processed and scored in real time through DOMjudge under official ICPC regional regulations. The problem set was prepared by the judge team from Zhejiang University, who also delivered a solutions presentation at the closing ceremony.

Medal Presentations and Industry Support

The 13 gold medals were presented by Prof. Xiaofang Zhou, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST. The 26 silver medals were awarded by representatives from Hudson River Trading (HRT), while the 39 bronze medals were presented by Prof. Song Guo, Associate Head (Research and Development) of CSE at HKUST. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of sponsors Huawei, Jane Street, JetBrains, and Hudson River Trading, whose contributions enabled the contest infrastructure, travel arrangements, and career fair. Building on this success, the department looks forward to future regional contests and continued preparation for ICPC Asia East Continent Finals and potentially World Finals qualification.

The contest was held in the S.H. Ho Sports Hall at HKUST.

13 Gold medals were presented by Prof. Xiaofang ZHOU, Department Head of the Department of the Computer Science & Engineering, HKUST.

26 Silver Medals were presented by the HRT.

39 Bronze Medals were presented by Prof. Song GUO, Associate Head (Research and Development) of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, HKUST.