Event Overview 

MoraXtreme 5.0 is a 12 hour all island inter university algorithmic coding competition organized by the  IEEE Computer Society University of Moratuwa, was held on 10th October 2020, 6:00 AM onwards on  HackerRank platform. Total of 15 questions with varying difficulty levels, were given to the competitors.  

A virtual awareness session was held prior to the competition on 3rd October 2020. Speakers for the  session were two members from winning teams of MoraXtreme 3.0. They shared their valuable  experiences, coding tips and tricks with participants. Vtools link : https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/240664

Purpose 

MoraXtreme is organized with the intention of enhancing the number of top rankers from Sri Lanka in  IEEEXtreme coding competition and to encourage Sri Lankan undergraduate student participation in  coding competitions. 

Event Order 

1. Awareness session – 3^rd October 2020 
2. MoraXtreme 5.0 – 10^th October 2020 
3. Award ceremony – Data TBA 

The awarding ceremony was planned to be held at the university premises with the presence of Mr. Gihan  Dias (Founder and CEO of LK Domain Registry) as the chief guest. The winners were planned to be gifted  with cash prizes as below. 

• 1st Place: A cash prize of LKR 20,000 
• 2nd Place: A cash prize of LKR 15,000 
• 3rd Place: A cash prize of LKR 10,000 

Because of the prevailing Covid-19 spread in the country, awarding ceremony was postponed and it will  be held as soon as the university starts. 

Guest Speakers for the awareness session 

Guest speakers for the awareness session are, 

1. Mr. Supun Abeysinghe – Research assistant at National University of Singapore, member of  MoraXtreme 3.0 winning team 
2. Mr. Isuru Manchanayake – PhD student at Purdue University, member of MoraXtreme 3.0 winning 

Participation 

More than 210+ teams, consisting of 510+ participants competed in MoraXtreme 5.0.

Team registrations – MoraXtreme 5.0 

Leaderboard

Feedback on MoraXtreme 5.0 

“MoraXtreme 5.0 was a good opportunity to apply our programming skills to solve algorithmic challenges.  Those 12 hours were filled with fun and excitement. All teams competed for surpassing each other. The  problems were well designed covering a lot of areas and to be honest some questions were really hard to  solve. It was a nice experience and thank you all the organisers for your effort. Sadly, this will be our last  year participating in MoraXtreme and wish you all the best for the upcoming years.” – Team KOS (Winner,  MoraXtreme 5.0) 

“Moraxtreme5.0 proved to be one of the steppingstones of success for our team. Organizing such an event  at this scale, improving it to be a national level competitive programming event to help the undergraduates  compete in IEEEXtreme is an impressive feat.” – Team Think (Second runners up, MoraXtreme 5.0) 

“Good competition to participate as a preparation for IEEEXtreme but I think the time gap between the  competitions are too narrow. If you could increase the duration to 24hours , it would be very nice. Good  luck on future work” – Team NSN (6, MoraXtreme 5.0) 

“It’s a good way to test your critical thinking skills against time. There were easy, medium and hard  questions so everyone can choose depending on their skill level” – Team 404 (41, MoraXtreme 5.0) 

Challenges we faced

We successfully organized MoraXtreme5.0, but not without challenges. 

• Given the pandemic situation in the country, we were unable to find sponsors for the events as most of the companies we reached for were in a difficult position financially. 

• We conducted awareness sessions virtually but found difficulties when it came to connectivity and  coverage issues.  

• We had to go out of our usual plan of organizing 2 to 3 rounds in MoraXtreme and were only able  to conduct one round this year because of Covid 19 and due to the time constraints.  

Amid all these challenges, with the untiring efforts of the organizing committee we were able to hold the events successfully. 

Event Overview 

IEEEXtreme 14.0, a 24-hour competitive global hackathon was held on 24^th October 2020. IEEE Computer  Society University of Moratuwa hosted the event for teams from University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. Usually, IEEEXtreme is held on university premises; however, due to the prevailing situation in the country,  participants had the privilege to code at home while being connected to their team members and proctor  through video meetings. 

Dr. Rasara Samarasinghe, Dr. Tharaka Samarasinghe, Prof. Ruwan Gopura, Ms. S.A.R. Kamalanayana, Mr.  Kavinga Ekanayake and Dr. Uthayasanker Thayasivam acted as proctors for the event. 

Vtools link : https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/246987 

Committee for hosting the event for teams from University of Moratuwa 

The competition was organized by a global IEEEXtreme organizing Committee. Organizing committee for hosting the even for teams from the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, is  mentioned below. 

Participation 

73 teams from University of Moratuwa participated in IEEEXtreme 14.0 representing Sri Lanka.

Achievements 

After 24-hours of intensive coding, five teams from Sri Lanka were able to secure ranks within the global  top 100, where 3 of them are from University of Moratuwa. 

• TeamNameUOM (World 57) – University of Moratuwa
•   Codebreakers (World 77) – University of Moratuwa 
• Ssss (World 100) – University of Moratuwa

As IEEE Computer Society University of Moratuwa, we are proud to say that out of top 100 ranks in Sri  Lankan scoreboard, 51 ranks were secured by teams from University of Moratuwa.  

Feedback for the event 

“IEEEXtreme 14.0 was a whole new experience for us because it was the first coding competition that spanned  for 24 hours straight, yet we managed to tackle the problems one by one and reach to the top 10 in the country  at the end of the day” – Team KOS (Winner, MoraXtreme 5.0) 

“It’s a good way to test your critical thinking skills against time. There were easy, medium and hard questions  so everyone can choose depending on their skill level” – Team 404  

Challenges we faced 

We successfully organized MoraXtreme5.0 and hosted IEEEXtreme 14.0, but not without challenges.

• Given the pandemic situation in the country, we were unable to find sponsors for the events as  most of the companies we reached for were in a difficult position financially. 
• We conducted awareness sessions virtually to help competitors to improve their coding skills prior  to IEEEXtreme. We faced some difficulties when it came to connectivity and coverage issues. 
• We were unable to host IEEEXtreme in the university premises as planned because some areas in country were in lockdown. Due to this reason, competitors participated for the event at home while being connected to their team members and proctor through video meetings. Amid all these challenges, with the untiring efforts of the organizing committee, we were able to hold the events successfully.