Illinois Computer Science Students to Compete in Programming Event World Finals

4/29/2009

3 UIUC students compete in world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition

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URBANA, IL -- Once again the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a team of three students competing in the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition--this is the sixth time in seven years. The Illinois team will test its skills against 100 teams of the most talented and creative information technology (IT) students from around the world in what is known as the "Battle of the Brains" on April 18-22, 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Illinois team includes computer science PhD students Yintao Yu and Mianwei Zhou, and sophomore Pichayoot Ouppaphan. Ouppaphan was a member of last year's world qualifying team. The team is coached by mathematics graduate student Jesse Beder, a member of CS's 2007 qualifying team. The team is led by computer science lecturer Dr. Marsha Woodbury.

This year's Regional Contest was a nail-biter. Due to an erroneous data set affecting the judge's scoring on one problem, this year's team was forced to wait in agony to see if they advanced to the finals. Their appeal was upheld, and they emerged as the first place winner in the Regional competition, advancing them to the finals.

The ACM-ICPC World Finals brings qualifying teams from around the world together to solve eight to ten highly-complex computer programming problems, modeled after real-world business challenges. The problems are designed to test students' knowledge, endurance, and business acumen.

Limited to only five hours, the teams need to demonstrate skills in a contest equal to a semester's worth of curriculum. The team that solves the most problems correctly in the least time will emerge as champions, earning scholarships, bragging rights and prizes from IBM.

"Illinois students are known not only for their real world problem solving skills, but also their creativity and adaptive thinking - crucial elements to success in this kind of competition," said Michael Heath, interim head of department and Fulton Watson Copp chair of computer science. "Competing for six out of the last seven years at ACM ICPC competition world finals confirms what we've always known to be true - Illinois computer science students are among the best and the brightest in the world."

More than 7,100 teams representing 1,838 universities went head to head this past fall during the Regionals portion of the competition, all vying for a top spot to qualify for the World Finals. "As the challenges our planet faces economically, environmentally and educationally become more daunting and profound, they require very clever solutions and this competition is an incredible opportunity for students to showcase the ability to solving real-world problems," said Doug Heintzman, Director of Strategy at IBM Software Group, and Sponsorship Executive of the ICPC. "This competition is a worldwide phenomenon, bringing together the brightest and most creative students from every corner of the planet and Stockholm is a fitting place to host this year's competition, as they are already world leaders in implementing IBM's Smarter Planet initiative."


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This story was published April 29, 2009.