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The University of Maryland is one of only 21 universities in the U.S. to participate in the 33rd annual World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), also known as the "Battle of the Brains," sponsored by IBM.
The world’s brightest computer programming talent will compete in the contest, which will be held at KTH-The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden on April 18-22, 2009. 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. A total of 100 universities worldwide will compete in April.
Teams of three students will be challenged to use their programming prowess and mental endurance to solve complex, real-world problems – a semester’s worth of curriculum – in just five hours. Programmers will tackle challenges from a variety of industries, such as developing a routing program to ensure secure business transactions over the internet, optimizing traffic flows, constructing a racecourse, plotting the most efficient route for a hospital helicopter and designing a Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation program. This contest gives collegiate computer programmers the opportunity to hone their problem-solving skills, using open standards such as Linux and Eclipse, which are being adopted by industries around the world. The team that solves the most problems correctly in the least time will emerge as World Champions, earning scholarships, bragging rights and prizes from IBM.
Additionally, as part of the week’s events, finalists will hear from top IBM experts and analysts about IBM’s bleeding-edge research on cloud computing, green IT and gaming technologies, some of the most popular and exciting realms of human and computer interaction and communication.
The faculty coach of the Maryland team is Computer Science Professor Amol Deshpande. The three student contestants are: Alan Jackoway, Mitchell Katz, and Richard Matthew McCutchen.
For more information, visit the ACM-ICPC website.
March 14, 2009
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