The following article, titled “Waterloo students snag top prizes at code/design to win,” was written by Bill Bean and appeared originally in the January 19, 2019 issue of Communitech News.
University of Waterloo students scooped up the $12,000 in top prizes Saturday at the fourth annual Code/Design to Win finals, held at Communitech in Kitchener.
Ahmed Sabie, a third-year computer science student at UW, placed first in the coding portion, taking home a cheque for $5,000, while Farbod Yadegarian, also a third-year CS student at UW, placed second, earning a cool $1,000. Both tied with a perfect score of 600, with the winner decided by the finishing time.
Of the coding winners, Tina Wilton, Communitech’s Campus Engagement Specialist, said, “The average time for solving the six hard problems is 4.5 hours. These two students solved them in under two hours. These students are remarkable.”
In the design portion, Peter Liu, a UW graduate with a double major in urban planning and economics, impressed the judges enough to earn the $5,000 first prize, while Victoria Vandenberg, a fourth-year UW student in global business digital arts, took home the cheque for $1,000.
Wilton said the design competitors had a range of skills, and that “the companies coming here are looking for a huge skill set, and that was demonstrated in the very impressive design submissions. It was a very close competition.”
Coding winner Ahmed Sabie said he wanted to thank Communitech “for offering the opportunity to meet all these other cool people. There are not a lot of events like this — this is really unique.” Better than the prize money, perhaps, was the post-presentation chat with a rep from TD’s Innovation Lab. Said Sabie, “I’m interested, but I’m keeping my options open.”