Benjamin Qi (also known as Benq and bqi343) is an American competitive programmer and the two-time winner of the

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming and one of the International Science Olympiads for secondary school students. It is the second largest science olympiad, after International Mathematical Olympi ...

, the "most prestigious" high school competition for algorithmic programming, in 2018 and 2019. Qi is considered one of the top 10 competitive programmers in the world. In December 2019, Qi also became one of the lead problem setters for the USA Computing Olympiad. He is also the director for the USACO Guide, a leading website for studying for the USACO.

Early life

Interested in both math and computer science from an early age, Qi was a quarterfinalist at the 2015 MATHCOUNTS, and an honorable mention at both the 2018 and 2019 USA Mathematical Olympiad. He completed his first USACO competition in December 2015. He attended Princeton High School from 2015 to 2019, and now attends the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

Competitive programming

IOI

Qi qualified for the USA's IOI time three times: in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Unable to attend the 2017 IOI, held in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, due to visa issues, he successfully attended the 2018 and 2019 IOIs, held in Tsukuba, Japan and

Baku, Azerbaijan Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world an ...

respectively. At the 2018 IOI, Qi scored 499 out of 600 points, 30 points more than second place Maolong Yang. He was the only contestant to fully solve the problems "Seats" and "Highway Tolls." At the 2019 IOI, which involved over 600 students from 88 countries, Qi scored 547.09 points ahead of second place Ildar Gainullin. Qi's two IOI wins made him only the fourth person to win multiple IOIs, and the first since

Gennady Korotkevich Gennady Korotkevich ( be, Генадзь Караткевіч, Hienadź Karatkievič, russian: Геннадий Короткевич; born 25 September 1994) is a Belarusian competitive programmer who has won major international competition ...

in 2011.

USACO problem setter

Following his high school graduation in 2019, Qi became one of the lead problem writers for the USACO contest. As of April 2021, he has contributed over two dozen problems to the contest.

Other competitions

In June 2021, Qi achieved the highest rating of all time on

Codeforces Codeforces is a website that hosts competitive programming contests. It is maintained by a group of competitive programmers from ITMO University led by Mikhail Mirzayanov. Since 2013, Codeforces claims to surpass Topcoder in terms of active co ...

of 3797, breaking a 4-year record held by

, although Korotkevich would subsequently reclaim the record a few months later. He finished 2nd place in the 2020

Facebook Hacker Cup Facebook Hacker Cup (also known as the Meta Hacker Cup) is an annual international programming competition hosted and administered by Facebook. The competition began in 2011 as a means to identify top engineering talent for potential employment ...

. He finished 6th place in the 2020

Google Code Jam Google Code Jam is an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google. The competition began in 2003. The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors ...

. He was a finalist at the 2020

Topcoder Open Topcoder Open (TCO) is an annual design, software development, data science and competitive programming championship, organized by Topcoder, and hosted in different venues around US. In the first two years, 2001 and 2002, the tournament was titl ...

. Qi also won a gold medal in the Romanian Master of Mathematics in 2019 and placed 2nd at the 2018 and 2019 February Harvard-MIT Math Tournaments.

ICPC

Qi participated in ICPC 2021 held in Moscow. His team (

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

) ranked 9th place and won a bronze medal.

USACO Guide

As part of his Competitive Programming Initiative, Qi created the USACO Guide in June 2020. Its stated purpose is to be a "comprehensive, organized roadmap carefully designed and crafted for USACO contestants – available to everyone, for free." On his

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account, Qi also has a repository with solutions to past USACO problems.

Publications

In 2022, Qi published a research paper 'On Maximizing Sums of Non-monotone Submodular and Linear Functions'. Qi was supervised by Tasuku Soma as part of

's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Qi, Benjamin Competitive programmers Living people 2001 births Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Princeton High School (New Jersey) alumni