IBM – one of the world’s leading multinational technology companies – launched the three-stage ‘Master the Mainframe’ competition back in 2005 to introduce aspiring coders to the IBM Z platform, which specialises in mission-critical technology for businesses with a 99.999% uptime rate, 100% encryption and all-round system reliability.

A total of 38 students from the School, which boasts a number of popular undergraduate courses including Automotive Engineering, Artificial Intelligence & Robotics and Cybersecurity, registered to take part.

Results from the 2019 ‘Master the Mainframe’ challenge showed that 13 students from University of Bedfordshire successfully completed Part 1, whilst two completed Part 2 and one student managed to get through to the final stage and complete Part 3.

Two students, Daniel Serbanescu and Radu Popescu, who were Part 2 and Part 3 finishers have been listed in the competition’s ‘Wall of Fame’ which features the top 33 participants from the UK.

Dr Paul Sant, Head of School of Computer Science Technology, commented:

“Coding is such an important skill for our students to obtain early on in their studies and will ultimately prove invaluable when it comes to employability or postgraduate study.  

“We encourage all our students to seek out opportunities such as this, as it will help build their coding confidence, enable them to practise their skills within a safe and trusted environment, and the end result can be gold dust for their CVs and future career paths.”