Samsung Research and Development Institute Philippines (SRPH), in partnership with Alliance of Computer Science Students - UPLB (ACSS-UPLB), UPLB Computer Science Society (UPLB COSS), UPLB Mathematical Sciences Society (UPLB MASS), and the Young Software Engineers’ Society (YSES) held a one-day coding camp entitled SRPH Competitive Coding Camp (S3C) at the Obdulia F. Sison Hall (CEC) Conference Room, University of the Philippines Los Baños last November 4, 2017.

For the first time in a while, YSES has taken part in an inter-organization activity in the university. This event’s Ad Hoc Committee was comprised of partner organizations’ representatives who were responsible for handling the registration, securing the venue, and processing the required permits in the university.

S3C aims to teach advanced programming topics to college students and professionals that will help them in creating faster and more efficient code in order to increase awareness of the importance of competitive programming to Filipino Engineers.

This camp, which was the first step of SRPH to introduce competitive programming to the university, also invited Mr. Clinton Poserio, the coach of the UPLB Competitive Programming Team.

The registration handled by the SRPH representatives and the Ad Hoc Committee started at 8 AM. The camp started as soon as the participants have settled. The hosts coming from the Ad Hoc Committee, Mr. Jose Maria Iuchanan Ingan from ACSS and Mr. Marquez from YSES, started the program by introducing S3C to the participants and conducting an icebreaker.

Ms. Ma. Michaela Rosales, an engineer from the Mobile Intelligence Lab of SRPH, was the first speaker of the event. She gave an introduction about competitive programming, Breadth-First Search (BFS) algorithm, and Depth-First Search (DFS) algorithm.

Mr. Michael Pascua, the Head of Data Intelligence Lab of SRPH, discussed about Graph Theory and graph algorithms.

Afterwards, a question and answer session took place, where the two previous speakers answered questions from the participants regarding the company and the topics discussed.

For the afternoon session of the camp, a coding exercise using HackerRank was prepared by SRPH. Mr. Jesseph Edrian David de Castillo, a Lead Engineer under Mobile Intelligence Lab, explained the rules for the activity as well as the question that needs to be answered.

Mr. de Castillo announced Mr. Kendrick Timothy Mercado as the “Top Coder” during the awarding of certificates. Mr. Mercado received a certificate of recognition and prizes from SRPH. The participants along with the partner organizations also received certificates of participation and appreciation, respectively. The event ended with a closing remark from Mr. Gelvin Gamez, the Head of Mobile Intelligence Lab.