Huawei has recruited two more talented teenagers!
But this time it is not a "genius teenager" at home, but from Russia.
One is Valeria Ryabchikova, a 22-year-old talented girl who has just won the ICPC 2020:
Another Ilya Khlyustov is younger, 20 years old, has not yet graduated from undergraduate, but is already a semi-finalist for ICPC 2021:
ICPC, known as the "Olympics of Programming", has a history of more than 50 years and is the world's largest and highest-level international collegiate programming design competition.
Dai Wenyuan, CEO of the fourth paradigm, won the Asian championship of the ACM-ICPC competition, and Lou Tiancheng, known as the "landlord" of the programming world, also won the second place in the 2007 ICPC Global Finals.
And this year's ICPC world champion can stand out from 58,963 participants from 104 countries and 3406 universities, and the name "genius" is well-deserved.
On the same day, the two young people joined Huawei's scientific research institution in Russia, the Nizhny Novgorod Institute, engaged in research in the two directions of intelligent computing application acceleration technology, algorithm and machine learning.
Moreover, as soon as they joined, they were entrusted with important tasks, and both of them served as "senior engineers".
In an interview, Valeria Ryabchikova (hereinafter referred to as "Valeria", the official translation of Huawei) laughed and said:
In college, I considered joining Huawei.
The "Origins of Huawei" Since College
As the world champion said, her relationship with Huawei begins with the university.
In 2017, Valeria enrolled at Nizhny Novgorod University.
This is a university established in 1917, full name Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University of Excellent Scientific Research, is the first state university in the former Soviet Union, the name of the school is derived from the famous Russian mathematician - Nikolai Lobachevsky.
Valeria in college seems to be like ordinary college students, posting selfies, posting cats, and occasionally complaining on her personal account because the subject is too difficult:
△ Valeria's personal VK account (Russian-speaking circle social platform)
However, Valeria has retained her interests since childhood, "programming and mathematics", not only joined the school's Institute of Information Science Mathematics and Mechanics, but also actively participated in various programming competitions.
One of the "programming competitions" is Codeforce, an online programming platform similar to Leetcode, the basic gameplay is also based on the topic of the task online, but more competitive programming, mainly for the competition, the originality and difficulty of the topic are higher.
Valeria has been active on this platform since her tenth grade (equivalent to our sophomore year of high school), and after going to college, she still tirelessly "plays CF", knocks code, and does tasks:
By 2020, she had completed nearly 2,000 missions and scored more than 2,100 points.
It was this year that a summer camp called PtzCamp (Petrozavodsk Programming Camp) was announced, which caught Valeria's attention:
This is a training camp dedicated to "pre-game training" for ICPC, and both the difficulty of the competition and the format are very similar to those of ICPC.
For Valeria, who loves programming, it is undoubtedly a good opportunity to accumulate experience in the top international programming competitions in advance.
So she signed up for the 38th PtzCamp, which she won with a high score:
Incidentally, huawei is also among the patrons of this PtzCamp, and it seems that from this time on, Valeria has had a deep connection with the company she will work for in the future.
It was also this year that a programming competition coach named Shyelev Alexe noticed Valeria, who was actively involved in many competitions, and invited her to join her own ICPC training class.
In the same year, the 44th ICPC was launched, and Valeria, who had been through a lot of battles, formed a three-person team with two other alumni and led by coach Shmelev Alexey to this "Olympic" that belonged to them.
△ Coach Shmelev Alexey
However, the competition has not yet fully started, and it has been postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to the outbreak of the epidemic.
And in August 2021, team coach Shmelev Alexey officially became a senior engineer at Huawei's Nizhny Novgorod Institute:
Shmelev Alexey LinkedIn homepage
Outside of work, Shmelev Alexey still finds time to help the student team with ICPC training.
The Huawei Nizhny Novgorod Institute, where he works, is also very supportive of the "part-time behavior" of employees, and also provides training places and some help for students.
This made Valeria have a certain understanding of Huawei during college, and thus planted a fire in her heart.
World champion and her new teammates
The pandemic eventually postponed the final to October 1, 2021, for five days in Moscow.
Valeria and her teammates rose through the competition to reach the World Finals with a second place in the semi-finals of the ICPC Northern Europe (NCRC) division.
On 1 October 2021, a total of 118 teams arrived in Moscow to compete.
They need to program 15 questions in a specified 5-hour period in C/C++, Java, and Python, with questions such as optimizing subway timetables, simulating air traffic control, tracking robot movements, and more.
The final result is scored by the computer, and the team that correctly answers the most questions within the allotted time wins.
Valeria and her teammates were the first to solve two of the problems, and finally successfully solved 12 questions, which was the team with the largest number of problems in the field, and thus won the ICPC championship trophy.
The ICPC competition has just come to an end, and Nizhny Novgorod State University has sent a new team to the 45th ICPC.
The last world champion, Valeria, gladly went, and this time a new member was added to the team —
Also a member of the Institute of Mathematical Mechanics for Information Science, 20-year-old Ilya Khlyustov.
He and Valeria have a very similar experience, and he has been practicing on Codeforce since "high school", and has scored a total of 2139 points so far.
Now, the new team has reached the semi-finals of the 45th EDITION OFICC Northern Eurasia Region and is heading for the upcoming World Finals in Bangladesh in November.
△ 2 Valeria on the left, Ilya Khlyustov in C
On December 21, 2021, the former world champion and her new teammates have been taken by Huawei.
When asked about "the reason for joining Huawei," the two gave similar reasons.
Valeria put it this way:
There are a lot of smart people working here and continuing to push the boundaries of science and technology.
Therefore, at Huawei, I can fully apply my knowledge to my work.
Ilya Khlyustov believes that working at a "big company like Huawei" will have the opportunity to influence the "process of technological development."
And, the 20-year-old also bluntly added another reason to "join Huawei":
I used to think that Huawei was just an IT company, and I only recently learned that it has a lot of research institutes, which is very attractive to me.
Russia: Huawei's third largest overseas R&D center
In fact, it is no secret that Huawei's scientific research institutions all over the world have long been available.
The hometown of the two talented teenagers recruited this time, Russia, already has 5 Huawei research centers.
Two of them were established when Huawei first entered the Russian market, located in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The other three, in response to Huawei's strategy of shifting its development focus from the United States to Russia, will open after 2019 in Novosibirsk, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod.
Now, Russia has become Huawei's third largest overseas R&D center in Europe and North America.
So far, Huawei has established a total of 16 R&D centers and 28 joint innovation centers around the world.
In addition to the above-mentioned Russia, there are 6 in France, and the most recent one is the Huawei Lagrange R&D Center, which was officially launched in October 2020, focusing on research in the basic fields of mathematics and computing.
The remaining five are responsible for chip, mathematics, home terminals, aesthetics, and sensor and software research and development.
In Italy, there is huawei Milan institute specializing in microwave transmission;
In Germany, huawei's Munich institute is responsible for operator software, optical networks, and future networks.
In Japan, Huawei's Tokyo Research Institute mainly studies material applications...
Looking at the world, Huawei not only opens scientific research institutions everywhere, but also "recruits" top talents everywhere for its use.
Erdal Arikan, a Turkish scientist who was personally awarded a special prize by Ren Zhengfei, proposed polarcode polarization codes in 2008 and later became one of Huawei's core technologies for 5G.
Last year, Huawei also "won" four Fields Medal winners and opened cooperation with them. Their research interests cover the basic mathematical fields of number theory, algebraic geometry, partial differential equations, and so on.
There is also the "genius teenager" program that is previously well-known in China and has a full range of topics.
In fact, Huawei's high-paid behavior of attracting geniuses and top scientists has brought heat and attracted a lot of criticism.
But Ren Zhengfei still said at Huawei's excellent talent & "high nose" report last year:
It is necessary to pay attention to the acquisition of 'high nose' talents and give overseas research institutes more budgets.
In addition, he also mentioned that it is necessary to actively embrace outstanding talents from different countries and different races, strengthen the acquisition and use of cross-professional and interdisciplinary talents, and continuously improve innovation capabilities.
This is also as the Fields Medal winner, Laurent Lafog, who started a new chapter in his research career at Huawei, said:
Many people at Huawei think about problems based on a 10- or 20-year vision, which is a valuable thing.