Lower Merion High School recently hosted their ninth annual CodeLM programming competition at Fluxspace in Norristown. This yearly coding contest serves as an opportunity for computer science enthusiasts to measure their fluency in programming languages like Java, Python and C++ against teams of students from ten high schools throughout the Greater Philadelphia area!

This year's event was organized by members of the Aces’ Computer Science Club, led by Nathan Aronson (‘24), Ethan Murray (‘24), Claire Wang (‘23), Noah Bissel (‘23), Eric Kleinman (‘24), David Oprea (‘25), Aaron Lin (‘25), Eli Dresnin (‘25), Bennett Schweickert (‘24), Kevin Wu (‘25), Diego Ordonez (‘24), Ryan Schaeffer (‘24), Jacob Guan (‘25), Griffin Turner (‘24), Sasha Murray (‘24), Harry White (‘24), Daniel Vossough (‘24) and Sam Serruya (‘24). These students worked under the direction of computer science teachers Tom Swope and Justin Mansor, and also received mentorship from alumnus and student-founder of CodeLM, Noah Rubin ('16).

The day began with a presentation delivered by Gabriel Wells, a software developer from event sponsor Susquehanna International Group (SIG), who explained how computer science and technology can be utilized in fields like market research and stock trading, among others. Grace Rogers, Campus Technology Recruiter at Fluxspace, also provided remarks as she welcomed the many students on hand for the event.

Finally, the competition was ready begin. Each participating team consisted of three students and was eligible to compete in one of three divisions: intermediate, advanced or expert. Using an automated dashboard developed by the LMHS Computer Science Club team and Rubin, competitors worked through a series of 13 computer science questions that required teams to decrypt secret messages, crack codes using heat signatures and fix compromised data.

At the end of the day, there was an award ceremony in which each division’s top-three teams received a prize - either a programmable Tello Drone or SIG merchandise, including headphones and bluetooth speakers. Teams from both Harriton and Lower Merion performed well in this year’s competition…see the results below!

Intermediate Division

• 2^nd Place - Aya Maarouf (HHS ‘26), Angelina Huang (HHS ‘26) and Haneen Maarouf (HHS ‘26)
• 3^rd Place - Owen Davis (LMHS ‘26) and Sam Polichino (LMHS ‘26)

Advanced Division

• 3^rd Place - Felix Kohler (LMHS ‘25), Harry Serota (LMHS ‘25) and Rohan Annapragada (LMHS ’25)

Expert Division

• Nathan Donagi (LMHS ‘24), Jennifer Yang (LMHS ‘25), and Nathaniel Gao (LMHS ‘26)