Code Showdown Tested Students’ Skills, Brought Alumni Back To Campus

Geek Week 2015 ended with the inaugural Code Showdown, hosted by Northeastern’s branch of the Association for Computing Machinery. Up for grabs were scholarships funded by Cipher Tech, a company founded in 2006 by two Northeastern engineering students.

The event was held on March 28 and rewarded winners with scholarships ranging from $250 to $1,200. The categories were optimization, in which a single problem needed to be solved with the best possible solution, and algorithms, in which problems of varying difficulty had to be solved for the correct answer, with more points awarded for the harder questions.

Keith Bertolino, who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Northeastern in 2008 and a master’s degree in engineering management in 2009, represented Cipher Tech at the event. “Anytime we see students giving up their weekend to come in and work on code, it’s an attribute we want to see in our employees,” he said. Nine of Cipher Tech’s full-time employees are Northeastern graduates.

Alp Elci and Mustafa Çamarcu teamed up to win first place in the algorithms portion of the contest. Both had experience in coding competitions, which they previously participated in while in Turkey. The two became acquainted at Northeastern. “We did our best,” says Elci, a freshman studying computer science with a concentration in cyber operations. “We both love algorithm problems and solving them, so we were there mostly for the enjoyment of the program. The participation was the best part.”

Elci and Çamarcu agreed that they would participate again if the Code Showdown becomes an annual event. And Çamarcu, a freshman pursuing a combined major in computer science and cognitive psychology, wants to take his competitive nature one step further and launch a student club devoted to computational contests.

“There is an international competition which ACM holds – International Collegiate Programming Contest,” he says. “Our main goal is to compete in that.”