UWG News Archive

Students compete at International Collegiate Programming Contest

October 27, 2004

CARROLLTON, GA - The University of West Georgia will be sending their best and brightest to the 2004-2005 the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). This year’s regional competitions are expected to draw tens of thousands of college participants (over 3,000 teams) from over 70 countries on 6 continents, all vying for a coveted spot at the World Finals, to be held April 3-7, 2005, in Shanghai, China.

Teams are made up of three students led by a student or faculty coach. The teams face a series of six to eight complex, real-world programming problems, to be completed in just five hours, which is equivalent to completing a semester’s worth of computer programming in one afternoon. These problems are designed to test not only programming skill, but also creativity and teamwork. The team that solves the most problems correctly, in the least amount of time, emerges as the international champion and wins bragging rights to the world’s smartest trophy.

The Contest has operated on an open source platform for the past three years, allowing students to become familiar with Linux and Eclipse. This year, IBM will expose these programmers to POWER parallel computing technologies.

Known for their enormous speed, memory, storage capacity and number crunching capabilities, IBM POWER-based parallel supercomputers have been used to solve some of the most difficult problems in physics, engineering, biology, geology and the environment.

University of West Georgia will be sending two teams for the regional qualification rounds, said Dr. Adel Abunawass, chair of the UWG computer science department. “The event is sponsored by IBM and will gather the best and brightest computer programmers around the world for an all-out ‘Battle of the Brains.’

The coach, Assistant Professor Daniel Rocco, said the competition consists of a set of problems that “will test the teams’ analytical reasoning, speed, accuracy and attention to detail.

“The teams practice solving problems quickly and effectively and hope to use the competition to demonstrate the skills they’ve acquired at UWG,” Rocco said. “The students represent a broad cross-section of West Georgia’s computer science talent.”

A team member, Sunitha Shenboi of Carrollton, won a $1,000 Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), an honor society for computing. Other team members are Raihan Ahmed of Carrollton, Kevin Keen of Temple, Nedko Hristov, Matthias Postina, Mitra Sinanan, all of Carrollton and Derek Wisong of Atlanta.

IBM has been the sole sponsor of the ACM-ICPC World Finals and primary sponsor of the worldwide ACM-ICPC Regional Contests since 1997. During that time, the numbers of teams participating has quadrupled. IBM’s commitment is part of a company-wide effort to advance the next generation of information technology talent.

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