CMU-Q team ranks first in Harvard coding contest

A team of four computer science students from Carnegie Mellon University Qatar (CMU-Q) received top honors at Harvard University’s CS50x Coding Contest.

The CMU-Q team, comprised of Julian Sam, Mohammed Khan, Mohammed Qusai and Abubaker Omer, was one of 12 teams that ranked first during the competition.

Ten problems were designed by scholars from Yale, MIT and the host school, Harvard. The CS50x Coding Contest is recognized globally as the “epic weekend of code,” in which participants have 72 hours to successfully handle the 10 problems.

“I tribute this success to the amazing experience that enriched us in our first year in CMU-Q -- and, hopefully, this is the first of many to come,” Omer said.

Each student on the CMU-Q team has completed one school year at the university. The team competed amongst 658 other teams from 89 countries.

“CMU-Q has a tradition of competing with tenacity and ingenuity in international contests,” Ilker Baybars, dean and CEO of CMU-Q, said. “Congratulations to each member of the winning team; I know we will continue to see great things from them.”