Good evening everyone. I am Kiminori Utsunomiya, the chairperson of International Information Science Foundation.
Thanks to the invitation from Ibaraki-prefecture and Tsukuba-city, The Asia Regional Contest this year is being held here at Tsukuba Science City quite smoothly. I deeply appreciate of great support from the governor, Mr. Masaru Hashimoto and the mayor, Mr. Kenichi Ichihara.
ACM Programming Contest has been held every year since 1977, as part of their student education program. The number of participants has grown rapidly; last year there were about 40,000 participants from 2,534 universities worldwide, undoubtedly making this the premier international competition in programming.
And, this is the eighteenth time that the Asia Regional Contest has been held in Japan. We had the largest number of teams participated ever in the Japanese preliminary contest, 372 teams from 82 universities competed.
The achievements of the contest is not just the increase of the participant teams’ number but also the remarkable outcome. In May this year, at the World Finals held in Marrakech, Morocco, the University of Tokyo finished in third place. This earned the gold medal and the university became Asian champion. The first prize went to St. Petersburg National Research University of IT, Mechanics and Optics, and the second was Moscow State University.
At this point, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the people who helped make this such a wonderful event. Without their help, this would never have come to fruition.
First, I would like to thank the Director of this Regional Contest, Professor Jiro Tanaka of University of Tsukuba, for realizing such a tremendous event.
My appreciation also goes to Steering Committee Members, all student volunteers, ICPC Secretaries and Japanese Alumni Group. Without all of your support, the participants may not have been able to program at the best of their abilities.
I would also like to thank the Chief Judge Professor Kiyoshi Ishihata of Meiji University along with all of the judges who made sure that all decisions would be fair. This is not an easy task, and I really commend them. Without their hard work and the resulting appropriate set of problems, this contest would not have been a success.
I would further like to thank the following 23 Japanese industrial sponsors:
IBM Japan, Ltd.
Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd.
Yahoo Japan Corporation
AtCoder Inc.
CANON INC.
DWANGO Co., Ltd.
e-Seikatsu Co., Ltd.
Facebook, Inc.
Fixstars Corporation
FreakOut, inc.
Google Japan Inc.
KLab Inc.
LINE Corporation
Preferred Networks, Inc.
RecoChoku Co., Ltd.
Softfront
WORKS APPLICATIONS CO., LTD
CYBERDYNE Inc.
Japan Third Party Co., Ltd.
Light Transport Entertainment inc.
M. SOFT CO., LTD.
NISSEICOM, LIMITED
teamLab Inc.
I would also like to thank the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, and all other entities that support this event.
Last but not least, I would like to thank each and every one of you for participating in this event. If it wasn’t for each of you, the 7 teams from Asia and the 35 teams from Japan, this event would never have been such a success. Thank you once again.
I hope everyone had a great time here. And I hope that the team that goes to the World Finals will become world champions.
Although this event is about to end in a while, I hope you will get to know each other, and that the friends you make today will last forever.