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In the German preliminary round of the international programming competition known as the International Collegiate Programming Contest, 123 teams from eleven German universities competed. The challenge of the German Collegiate Programming Contest (GCPC) consisted of solving 13 complex programming tasks in just five hours. Julian Dörfler and Jasper Slusallek from Saarland University were the only participants to complete twelve tasks, and thus secured first place. Hence, the two Saarbrücken computer science students have secured a place in the next higher elimination competition, the Northwestern European Regional Contest (NWERC). The location for the World Final will be announced in August.

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s are considered the new mass diseases. According to Alzheimer’s Disease International, there were 46.8 million people with dementia worldwide in 2015, expected to reach 131.5 million in 2050. In order to be able to detect neurodegeneration in time and to pave the way for curing dementia in the future, scientists are exploring the potential of small non-coding RNAs, parts of the genome that regulate the gene expression. One way to analyze these RNAs is to use so-called high-throughput sequencers, which have become more powerful in recent years. Saarland University is working together with Chinese genomics organization BGI – one of the largest genomics centers worldwide – to decipher the relevance of such RNAs in neurodegeneration and aging and to establish a lab in Saarbrücken. 

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