Maths students win N Brown Coding Competition prizes

Three students in the Department of Mathematics have been awarded prizes in a coding competition forming an optional part of the Programming with Python course led by Dr Stefan Güttel.

The competition involved coding an AI computer opponent for the classic game Othello - a two-player strategic game played on an uncheckered 8x8 grid - and more than 20 students entered.

It was sponsored by the N Brown Group, an international online retailer with several well-known key brands such as Jacamo and Simply Be. N Brown has close links with the Department of Mathematics, having been involved in a previous SIAM Student Chapter Industry Challenge and an industry MSc project.

Students of the Python course were invited to N Brown's headquarters in Manchester city centre to hear a presentation on computer vision and attend the competition's prize ceremony. Hongyang Bai collected the first prize, Sanja Karilanova came second, and Joshua Walton third.

Further certificates for fourth to seventh places were handed to Thomas Creasy, Pingfan Su, Josh Mottley, and Hannah Davies, respectively. 

We congratulate all the winners and participants, and thank N Brown for their sponsorship.