Department of Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Student Team Participates in the World's Most Prestigious Programming Contest
The '2 3 5 8 14' team, composed of Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Department of Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence students 정우경·김용훈·허성범, participated in the Asia Pacific Championship of the 2026 ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest), the world’s most prestigious collegiate programming competition.
The ICPC is an international contest in which university students worldwide form teams to solve complex algorithmic problems within a time limit. It is often called the 'Olympics of Collegiate Programming.'
Sponsored by global IT companies such as Google and IBM, the contest is the most prestigious competition in the field of programming and attracts more than 3,000 universities from 111 countries each year.
The contest format has three-member teams sharing a single computer, competing across mathematical reasoning, algorithm design, and problem-solving speed.
The 2026 ICPC Asia Pacific Championship is the regional final for the Asia-Pacific area, in which only the top 70 teams—selected based on outstanding results in national ICPC contests within the region—may participate. Teams that perform well at this championship advance to the ICPC World Finals.
In this regional final, only eight universities from Korea, including JBNU, Seoul National University, KAIST, and Yonsei University, earned berths. The championship featured top Asian universities such as the University of Tokyo and the National University of Singapore (NUS), resulting in fierce competition.
The JBNU '2 3 5 8 14' team applied a broad range of skills across areas such as data structures, graph theory, and mathematical optimization while solving numerous high-difficulty algorithmic problems under time constraints, gaining experience on a world-class competitive stage.
By competing alongside Asia's top teams and personally experiencing a global-level problem-solving environment, the students have gained an invaluable asset.
Professor 정종욱 of the Department of Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence, who supervised them, said, 'Participation in the International ICPC competition itself signifies recognition of world-class ability,' and added, 'We expect the students to grow further based on this experience and achieve outstanding results on the international stage in the future.'