DOHA: Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) celebrated creativity and innovation in computer programming at the 10th annual Alice Middle East Programming Competition, which brought together 102 middle and high school students from 16 schools across Qatar for the final round.
This year’s competition challenged participants to develop animations and games in the categories of Educational Innovation, Smart Cities and Urban Solutions, Health and Wellness, and Disaster Response and Emergency Management.
The Alice Middle East Programming Competition is hosted by the Hamad Bin Jassim Center for K-12 Computer Science Education. The HBJ Center is a partnership between Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and the Jassim and Hamad Bin Jassim Charitable Foundation to help school children in Qatar learn the fundamentals of computational thinking and prepare them to shape the future knowledge-based society.
CEO and Member of Board Directors at the Jassim and Hamad Bin Jassim Charitable Foundation, Saeed Mathkar Al-Hajri said: “We are very proud of these students who used their skills and knowledge in programming to create thoughtful and impactful projects. We believe that education in computer science is a key to transforming Qatar into a knowledge-based economy, and these students are excellent representatives of the talent Qatar is cultivating.
Khaled Harras is CMU-Q’s senior associate dean for faculty, a teaching professor of computer science, and the director of the HBJ Center.
“The Alice Programming Competition reflects the growing enthusiasm and talent for programming that we are seeing among middle and high school students in Qatar,” Harras said. “The mission of the HBJ Center is to inspire and inform young people in the area of computing, and each year we see students in Qatar more engaged and more adept in computational thinking.”
After an initial screening round of 128 project submissions, shortlisted teams presented their projects at the CMU-Q campus.
A panel of 15 judges from CMU-Q, Education Above All, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, PWC, Qatar Computing Research Institute, Qatar Science and Technology Secondary School for Boys, and Tawar Games evaluated the projects based on creativity, technical application, and presentation.
Almajid Group, who supports excellence in creative programming, provided prizes that totaled QR15,000.
In the advanced category, Bangladesh MHM School and College took first place.
Amna Bint Wahab Preparatory for Girls School placed second, and Birla Public School came in third.
For the beginners category, Qatar Academy for Science and Technology won first place.
Second place was awarded to Al Khor International School CBSE Senior, and third place went to Mesaieed International School.
The Alice software was originally developed at Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, USA, as a tool to teach programming concepts.
Researchers at the Qatar campus, with the support of the Qatar National Research Fund, adapted the software to the Middle East context and developed textbooks and a curriculum in English and Arabic.
Now integrated into Qatar’s national curriculum, Alice Middle East is now taught to over 5000 students annually.
