Mugdha Kadam, Shahini Sengupta ranked in the top 10.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Five Indian-origin contestants placed among the winners of the IBM’s 2014 “Master the Mainframe” competition, with two of them placing in the top 10 overall: University of South Florida’s Mugdha Kadam, and RCC Institute of Technology’s Shahini Sengupta.
The two young ladies placed fourth and fifth, respectively, out of 43 winners that span six different continents. Both are also the only women in the entire top 15 winners. The other desi victors are 19th-ranked Selvkumar Vairasamy (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada), Pravin Prame Kumar (#37, Monash University, Australia), and Abhra Dasgupta (#40, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur).
Kadam is a business analyst generalist at HealthPlan Services, in Tampa, Florida. Originally from Mumbai, she holds a B.S. in computer science from Mumbai University, and an M.S. in Management Information Systems from the University of South Florida. She applied to the IBM contest when she was still a student last year, but has been working since January 2014.
Sengupta is currently a fourth-year student at RCC Institute of Information Technology in Kolkata, from which she is graduating later this year with a B.Tech degree.
The 43 winners were all chosen from 20,000 contestants, all of who are either undergraduate of post-graduate students at universities around the world. The purpose of the “Master the Mainframe” competition was to recognize student who could build a viable business application using IBM’s proprietary mainframe.
The students were put to the test during the competition, which “sharpened their programming skills, cultivated advanced development tools, and learned how the mainframe platform supports Cloud, Big Data & Analytics, Mobile and Security initiatives,” according to IBM.
Finalists received an all-expense-paid trip to IBM’s offices in New York City earlier this month, on April 5-9, at which point they put their programming skills on display, essentially mastering IBM’s mainframe by designing algorithms and coding for as per the outlines of the contest.
While nearly all of the contestants are well-versed in computer programming, IBM states that even a neophyte could compete, as the challenges start relatively easy but get increasingly complex, requiring advanced problem solving skills more than hard coding knowledge to become a champion.
While all participants received plaques for being part of the competition, the top three winners received trophies and a prize package, which included a nearly $2,000 laptop computer, at a ceremony on April 8. That date was also to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the IBM Mainframe’s creation, in 1964.