The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), sponsored by IBM, is the premiere global programming competition conducted by and for the world’s universities. ICPC was first held at Texas A&M University in 1970, where the Alpha Chapter of the Upsilon Phi Epsilon Computer Science Honor Society hosted it. The contest has grown to include thousands of teams from more than 2,000 universities in 94 countries. This year, Texas A&M was again host to a site for the regional ICPC competition.
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering was one of three sites hosting teams as part of the South Central USA regional ICPC meeting. Twenty-six teams from eight universities came to Texas A&M. Louisiana State University and LeTourneau University were the other host sites, together hosting another 36 teams. South Central USA’s region is Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma and the winner will go on to the world finals in Morocco next May.
For this competition, teams of three students represent their universities. The students have to share one computer during the contest, which involves writing programs to solve computer problems. Teams are ranked based on how many problems they solve, and then on the time it takes to solve them, with penalties for wrong submissions. The contest lasted five hours, and the winning team solved its fifth and winning problem with just three minutes left.
Texas A&M had three teams enter, who were selected from the top finishers of about 30 students who participated in a local contest that was held on campus in September. Texas A&M teams finished in seventh, ninth, and 27th in the region. A team from Rice won first place, with a team from the University of Texas at Austin in second.
The three teams from Texas A&M consisted of CSE students Spencer Rawls, Kevin Vece, Ross Dixon, Cameron Hill, Brian Maule, Eliezar Cabrera, and Nathan Villanueva, petroleum engineering major Joseph Cox, and first year math graduate student Austin Conner.
“Coaching these teams for many years has been a lot of fun,” said CSE Professor and Associate Head for Academics, Dr. John Keyser. “I enjoy seeing how students and teams progress over time, watching the scoreboard during the contest, and challenging myself on some of the problems! It has given me a chance to get to know lots of our undergraduates well. I have enjoyed participating in ICPC ever since I was competing as an undergraduate myself, and I am glad to get the chance to continue now as a coach.”