PACT Asia is a month-long intense summer course in theoretical computer science designed for high school students from Asia.

Origin

PACT Asia branched off PACT, the theoretical CS summer program in the US that has been highly successful in the past decade. Run by instructor Prof. Rajiv Gandhi, PACT has grown from a class of 10 students in 2011 to over 150 in 2022. USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) has recommended PACT to high school students interested in theoretical computer science. Many past PACT students have also gone on to pursue their passion for this field or other STEM majors at top institutions — MIT, Princeton, and Harvard, to name a few.

PACT Asia is designed to meet the needs of many Asian students — the course meets at times that work well for students in Asia and the curriculum is tailored to suit their academic needs.

Syllabus

Discrete Math Topics

Proofs – Logic / set theory – Basic proof techniques (direct / contradiction / contrapositive) – Induction – Pigeonhole Principle	2–3 lectures
Graphs  – Graph basics – Trees (rooted trees / spanning trees)	1–2 lectures
Graphs  – Graph coloring, Hamiltonian & Eulerian graphs	1–2 lectures

Algorithm Topics

Stable matching	1 lecture
Asymptotic notations	1 lecture
Graph algorithms – Graph algorithm basics – BFS and DFS – Shortest Path	4–5 lectures
Greedy algorithms	4 lectures
Divide and conquer	2–3 lectures
Other topics (*subject to change) – Huffman coding – NP-completeness, etc.	1–2 lectures

A typical day of PACT Asia