Communications of the ACM
Computer Science Coding Competition Kicks Off
Credit: Tekserve
TradingScreen and The MIT Enterprise Forum announced the launch of the third annual, award-winning "Dream it. Code it. Win it." contest, an international student coding competition that rewards and promotes creative problem solving, diversity, and literacy in the field of computer science. High-school and college students worldwide can begin to submit their solutions to compete for $80,000 in prizes. The Awards Ceremony will be held on May 5 at the Cooper Union Great Hall in New York City.
Dream it. Code it. Win it. differs from traditional coding competitions or hackathons, which focus on coding alone, because entries are judged on both the quality of the problem and solution. Participants are rewarded for tackling tough problems and finding creative solutions. In the past two years, the competition achieved a 50 percent female participation rate, awarded over $150,000 in prizes, and enabled eight teams to launch their own companies, with one team presenting at the White House.
The focus at the 2016 Awards Ceremony is "Engineering Solutions from Social Good to Entertainment." The event will feature panels of entertainment and technology industry luminaries including Kevin Mayer, senior executive vice president and chief strategy officer of The Walt Disney Company, and John Underkoffler, CEO and founder of Oblong, who is known for his innovations in UI-centered design, technology, and commercial vision having served as a science advisor to films including Minority Report, The Hulk, Aeon Flux, and Iron Man.
This year's Platinum Sponsor is Fiverr, an online marketplace for creative professional services.
In addition to helping organize the event, TradingScreen, a provider of electronic financial transaction technology, will present the $10,000 Technology Entrepreneurship Award for the third consecutive year. This year there will be an even greater effort to engage more European students in the global competition.
"There are a number of initiatives throughout Europe to encourage entrepreneurship, and there are many talented engineering students," says Philippe Buhannic, CEO and founder of TradingScreen. "French engineers have succeeded in creating the strong tech culture in academia. France has 80,000 engineering and 70,000 Ph.D. students. One-third of the 17,000 doctoral students graduating this year want to be entrepreneurs. This is a big shift over the past decade."
"Problem solving is a critical skill that creates opportunities, which is what the competition rewards," says Cristina Dolan, Dream it. Code it. Win it. founder and event organizer. "If you can solve an employer's problems, you have a job; if you can solve customer problems, you have a company; and if all students master problem solving, we will have a better world. The world's problems are becoming more complex, and we need diverse problem solvers to generate diverse solutions."
In its three years of existence, Dream it. Code it. Win it. has engaged students from over 45 countries and has won a Trader Magazine Charitable Works Award and four Stevie Awards including Organization of the Year.
The Internet Society will provide a live webcast of the Awards Ceremony on May 5 at: http://livestream.com/internetsociety/dreamitcodeitwinit3.
Entries will be accepted until midnight on April 3, 2016.
No entries found