At the   regional IT competition “ICPC SEERC 2024,”  teams from Serbia won   the first three places in the competition of 91 teams from 10 countries   and achieved the best success of our country so far, as well as a placement at the European and global level of the prestigious ICPC competition.

The 2024 Southeastern European Regional Contest was held   from 16 to 17 November in Bucharest, Romania for competitors from Albania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, North Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Türkiye, Ukraine, and Serbia.

The competition consisted of 13 tasks that had to be solved in five hours.

Students from the University of Novi Sad (Team Infinity – Tadija Šebez, Nikola Pešić, Viktor Lučić) won the first place,  the second place was taken by the students of the Faculty of Computer Science of the Union University, and the third place by the students at the University of Belgrade.

All three teams have qualified for the European level of the competition, which will take place from February 28 to March 2 next year in Portugal.

The teams of the University of Novi Sad and the Faculty of Computer Science of Union University have directly qualified for the world level of the prestigious competition, which will most likely be held in China.

The long-term collaboration of Prof. Dr. Ivana Štajner Papuga, Full Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, with colleagues from Óbuda University in Budapest, which spans for over a decade, was recognized this September with a significant award from Óbuda University. Our colleague, Prof. Dr.  Ivana Štajner Papuga, was promoted to the title of honorary professor at a ceremonial opening of the new academic year at Óbuda University in Budapest, held on September 9, 2024.

The award was confirmed by the Senate of Óbuda University, and the diploma was presented to her by the Rector, Prof. Dr. Levente Kovács. The following day, Prof. Dr. Ivana Štajner-Papuga gave a lecture titled “Three Fuzzy Problems” at a mini-symposium for laureates.

Óbuda University is one of the largest higher education institutions in Hungary, with over 12,000 students across 7 faculties in Budapest and the surrounding towns, in various fields including engineering, information technology,  sciences, economics, agriculture, and pedagogy. Founded in 2010 as the legal successor of Budapest Tech, Óbuda University has a 140-year-long history. In the 2024 world university rankings published by Times Higher Education (THE), Óbuda University ranked among the top 1,200 higher education institutions in the world, placing it in the top 4% globally.

• Obuda University
• Awarding ceremony
• Mini simposium

The team from the University of Novi Sad (with 3 out of 4 members from the Faculty of Sciences), after winning the first place in the Southeast European regional competition, participated in the 47th finals of the largest global programming competition – ICPC.

The team members were:

• Nikola Pešić (Faculty of Sciences)
• Viktor Lučić (Faculty of Sciences)
• Tadija Šebez (Faculty of Technical Sciences)
• Marko Savić, coach (Faculty of Sciences)

The finals were held in Luxor, Egypt, and included teams from 130 universities worldwide. Our University of Novi Sad team achieved an excellent result – 17th place! Furthermore, according to official criteria, they share 13th place, as teams solving the same number of tasks after 12th place are ranked equally (time penalties are not counted).

This result ranked us higher than world-renowned universities such as MIT, Kyoto University, St Petersburg University, ENS Paris, ETH Zurich, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, Stanford, and many others.

The top 12 teams are awarded medals, and our team performed at a level worthy of a top 10 placement, but due to a minor mistake, that opportunity slipped away. Nonetheless, they truly deserved it for the effort they put into their preparation, leaving a chance to aim for a medal next year.

• Complete results

We are grateful to the Microsoft Development Center in Serbia and the Serbian Mathematical Society for their help and support.

Assistant professor at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Stefan Nikolić, received on March 26, 2024, in Valencia, the award for the best doctoral dissertation in the category “New Directions in Systems Design Methods and Tools, Simulation and Validation, Embedded Software Design, and Optimization for Embedded, Cyber-Physical, Secure and Learning Systems.”

The award was presented by the European Design and Automation Association at the ceremony in the Hemisferic Center of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.

Nikolić’s dissertation, “Automating the Design of Programmable Interconnect for Reconfigurable Architectures,” is the result of years of research conducted during his PhD studies and as Assistant at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Last year in October, the team from the Faculty of Science “Pannonian Crew”, consisting of Aleksandar Rončević, Mihailo Milenković, Petar Kapriš and Vladimir Krsmanović, all attending Computer Science Program, won the first place in the national competition for best technological innovation in the category of student innovations. They developed the innovation “Lara” – a system for automatic accident detection and rescue of sailors, which consists of hardware and software systems.

These talented young people, Computer Science students, had contacts with associations such as Maker even as high school students, when they studied and expanded their horizons and ambitions through extracurricular activities. This victory gave them additional confidence that the real potential of their idea was recognized, which paved the way for a much broader dimension of the process of innovation creation. Young researchers’ plan is to continue with the development of the idea and to test it on real ships soon.

Here’s the good news about Lara again!

POPRI International is an international competition for innovations and business ideas. The competition is held every year as part of the EUSAIR Forum which was held in Tirana this year.

The 7^th Forum of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR) is an annual forum dedicated to connecting the countries of the Adriatic-Ionian region. The event itself provides an opportunity to promote projects for the development of the region, as well as for connecting young people and presenting their ideas to influential people from the region.

As part of the delegation from our country, the PMF Student Team and their Lara Project, won the first place in the competition of the 9 best teams from each country in the region. It is important to mention that our high school team, which competed in the second category, also won gold.

The competition was opened by Giuseppe Di Paola (European Commission Policy Coordinator, EUSAIR DG Regio) and Edona Bilali, Albanian Minister of Entrepreneurship and Startups.

Welcoming speeches at the award ceremony were given by Mirela Koci (Auleda – Local Economic Development Agency), Tanja  Kožuh (Primorski Tehnološki Park) and Ruta Zarnauskaite (Head of the Research and Innovation Department of the European Commission).