SLIIT teams blaze a winning trail at Codefest 2012

Three teams from SLIIT charged through stiff competition to emerge winners in the open category of the nationwide software development competition, Codefest 2012 held recently.

The event, hosted by Faculty of Computing of SLIIT, aimed at showcasing the programming talents of students and also featured a school category as well as a mini Hackathon. The open category targeted students of any university or any degree awarding institute, where participants had to demonstrate their skills through the development of a mobile application.

The three SLIIT projects, ‘N Virus’, ‘Transcender’ and ‘Sri Ludo’ were awarded Rs. 60,000 , Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 10,000 for first, second and third place respectively, with SLIIT stepping in to support marketing the winning teams project.

Winners of the school category for the best three projects are Dudley Senanayake Central, Royal College and C. W. W. Kannangara Central. These winners walked away with Rs. 80,000, Rs. 60,000 and Rs. 40,000 for first, second and third place respectively. The project by the C.W.W. Kannangara Central team, which developed a School Management System Software, was handed over to the Ministry of Education to be utilised by schools island-wide.

The mini Hackathon was held parallel to the main competition, where applicants were given a specific topic and had to develop software within a five-hour timeframe. R.M. Jayasekara, W.S.V.P. Perera, and H.T.B.G. Siriwardena, who developed the project ‘Metro 360’, were adjudged winners of this category.

“We realised that many school students have a keen interest in studying ICT but hardly have any opportunities to display their skills and talents for software development,” stated Professor Lalith Gamage, President and CEO of SLIIT. “Most of the software competitions held in Sri Lanka cater to university students, hence SLIIT’s Department of IT, Faculty of Computing wanted to organise a national-level software competition to generate interest in this field and provide valuable opportunities for students to showcase their capabilities in software development.”

Dean – Computing of SLIIT, Dr. Malitha Wijesundara said: “Our gratitude goes to the SLIIT management, lecturers, assistant lecturers and instructors for driving this competition and making it a great success.”

“We aim to organise Codefest again next year and hope to take this national software competition to greater heights in Sri Lanka,” stated Dr. Rohan Samarasinghe, Coordinator of Codefest 2012.

Microsoft, Etisalat, IFS and Virtusa, and Sheffield Hallam University (UK) were on board as the industry and academic partners for Codefest 2012.