A trio of computer science students from the University of 蓝莓视频 were among the top programmers from 128 universities across six continents invited to battle it out in Rapid City, South Dakota on May 24, 2017 at the聽.
鈥淲orld finalists emerge from local and regional ICPC competitions that take place in the fall,鈥 said Professor Troy Vasiga, one of the team鈥檚 coaches. 鈥淭he ICPC is a gruelling five-hour programming competition and 蓝莓视频鈥檚 World Finalist team of Timothy Li, Antonio Molina Lovett and Jacob Jackson聽. This is a huge accomplishment and I鈥檓 extremely proud of them.鈥
Headquartered at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and known as the 鈥淏attle of the Brains,鈥 the world鈥檚 oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest fosters creativity, teamwork and innovation in building new software programs. Huddled around a single computer, trios of students have five hours to solve 12 complex real-world programming problems.
Selection took place from a field of more than 300,000 students in computing disciplines worldwide. A record number of students advanced to the regional level, as 46,381 contestants from 2,948 universities in 103 countries on six continents competed at more than 480 sites, all with the goal of earning one of the coveted invitations to the annual ICPC World Finals.
鈥淐ongratulations to Timothy, Antonio and Jacob for their impressive standing and to their coaches Troy Vasiga, Andy Huang and Ond艡ej Lhot谩k,鈥 said Mark Giesbrecht, Director of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. 鈥淭hey were the top trio of programmers from North America, beating teams from MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, University of Alberta and UBC among other universities.鈥
Over the last four decades, the聽ACM-ICPC聽has grown from a rivalry among the universities of Texas to a worldwide, multi-tiered competition. In addition to competing in the World Finals, students are exposed to the latest open technologies influencing cloud and mobile computing, the Internet of things and artificial intelligence. The聽ICPC聽is sponsored by IBM and hosted by Excellence in Computer Programming.