Students of HSE Faculty of Computer Science Win True Tech Champ by MTS

© HSE University

The final of the True Tech Champ Programming Olympiad from MTS took place at the end of October. Twelve students emerged as victors from the competition, including two second-year master’s students from the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, Ivan Safonov and Maxim Gorokhovsky.

True Tech Champ is a platform for beginners and experienced developers. The Olympiad was held over three rounds: an online qualifying game, a semi-final, which included two tracks (solving algorithmic problems and writing an algorithm to optimize the consumption of cloud resources) and the final. Following the results of the qualifying competitions, 250 people took part in the final round.

Twelve participants were awarded prizes. Two second-year master’s students of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, who participated in the track on solving algorithmic problems, were among the winners. Ivan Safonov, from the ‘Math of Machine Learning’ programme, was the overall winner among students and schoolchildren, and Maxim Gorokhovsky, from the ‘Modern Computer Science’ programme, took second place.

The final round of True Tech Champ was held in the festival format — MTS President Vyacheslav Nikolaev, as well as representatives of MTS and other companies delivered welcoming speeches. IT industry experts gave lectures on artificial intelligence, development, machine learning and smart contracts. The finalists networked with IT recruiters in the One Day Offer format. As well as all this, an entertainment zone, stand-up performance, a concert and even a performance by an astronaut were organised for the festival participants.

Pavel Voronin

First Vice President for Technology at MTS Digital

‘At MTS, we believe that the development of young IT specialists is an important strategic task, and we are proud that HSE University is one of our key partners in the educational process. Our close cooperation has helped us launch several courses and open a joint department on deep machine learning at the Faculty of Computer Science. We know that there are talented students at HSE University, who not only choose our educational programmes at their university, but also actively participate in external events, such as the True Tech Champ.

I hope that all participants took away a positive impression from all the interesting tasks and masterclasses during the qualifying and the final rounds of this coding festival. I want to thank all the participants and extend my congratulations to the winners!’

Mikhail Gustokashin

Director of the Centre of Student Competitions at the Faculty of Computer Science

‘Algorithmic programming competitions are very popular, many companies hold this type of contest, both to support the community and to find talented programmers for hiring. The Faculty of Computer Science has launched a joint department with MTS, and we hope that the success of our students will further strengthen our cooperation.’

Ivan Safonov

Second-year student of the master's programme ‘Math of Machine Learning’

‘This year, MTS organized the championship, which included two tracks: one on sports programming for schoolchildren and students, the other - on product programming. I participated in the first track.

In the final of my track there were slightly more than 100 participants, many of whom I knew. There were a lot of strong students who, like me, regularly participate in such competitions.

In total, we were given six tasks, which had to be solved in four hours. All the tasks, except the last one, turned out to be simple, but we had to solve them as quickly and as accurately as possible in order not to get any penalty points.

Unfortunately, I failed to solve these problems accurately, and therefore, going into the last problem, I was in eight place. But it helped me to understand that I must definitely solve the last problem to win a prize. Therefore, I managed to pull myself together and finish the problem in the remaining time. In the end, it turned out that I was the only person who managed to solve it, so I won.’