The computer programming team named “Silk Road Village Team,” representing the USTC School of the Gifted Young, has advanced to the 49th ICPC World Finals by achieving the second place at the 2024 ICPC Asia Regional Contest in Nanjing. This marks our school's fourth consecutive year advancing to the ICPC World Finals, once again demonstrating the formidable strength of our competitive teams. The 49th ICPC World Finals will be held in Azerbaijan in late August 2025. Approximately 140 teams from eight global regions, including 16 teams from East Asia, will gather to compete.

The ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) is the world's premier university programming competition, comprising two stages: Regional Contests and the World Finals. Each year, approximately 50,000 students from over 2,000 universities across more than 100 countries participate in a nine-month competition cycle. After over 50 years of development, the ICPC has become the most influential university computer competition, earning the title of the “Olympic Games of Computer Science.”

The “Silk Road Village Team” comprises Zhou Zhai’enhe, Hong Wenjie, and Guo Yihang. At the ICPC Nanjing Regional Contest, they solved 8 problems with 910 penalty minutes, defeating strong competitors including teams from Tsinghua University and Peking University to secure the second place and advance to the World Finals.

In recent years, our teams have collectively earned over 90 medals across events like ICPC and CCPC, including one CCPC and one ICPC regional runner-up trophy. At the 48th ICPC World Finals in 2024, the USTC team delivered an outstanding performance, ranking the 14th among 141 participating teams globally. We cheer for our students and wish them good luck in delivering a steady performance at the 49th ICPC World Finals.