Computer science students from UBC ranked among the world's brightest at this year's International Programming Competition, placing 23rd in a competitive field of 100 teams.
"I'm very proud of what the UBC students have accomplished," said Bill Aiello, head of the UBC Department of Computer Science. "It's not just about this year's ranking, but how consistently they've performed. That's a testament to how talented and hard-working these students are."
This year marked a rare opportunity for the students--Henry Wong, Patrick Nguyen and Anton Likhtarov--to compete on home turf at the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest--often dubbed the Battle of the Brains or the Cyber Super Bowl. Recent years have seen the UBC team travel to Tokyo, Texas, Shanghai and Prague to compete, and place as high as 13th. The annual competition hosts 100 teams from 33 countries--a field narrowed over the course of the year from 6,700 teams representing 1,821 universities in 83 countries.
"The competition was really fierce," confirms Nguyen. "There were nearly 7,000 teams at the regionals, and only the best 100 advanced to the world finals." Students from St. Petersburg University of IT, Mechanics and Optics took this year's title.
