UBC Shines at International 'Battle of the Brains' Software Competition

Students from the University of British Columbia have out-coded some of the world's elite young programming talent, placing 14th at the 2010 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest held in Harbin China this Friday.

Outperforming teams from Columbia University, and edging out rivals MIT and the University of Waterloo based on time, the team completed 5 of 12 problems correctly during the grueling five-hour competition.

The ranking matches UBC's second-best finish at the competition, and is Canada's top showing this year. UBC Computer Science students Cedric Lin, Simon Suyadi and Robert Tseng make up the team.

"The tenacity and talent of UBC's computer science students never ceases to impress me," said Prof. Bill Aiello, Head of the Department of Computer Science. "This is latest in a string of strong finishes in the World Final, and the entire department is extremely proud of all of our teams, coaches and advisors."

Affectionately known as the Battle of the Brains, the Association for Computing Machinery competition is the oldest—and often cited as the most prestigious—computer programming contest in the world.

"This finish confirms that our students are truly world-class programmers," says Assoc. Prof. Will Evans, the teams' faculty advisor. "The critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration skills demanded of this contest also indicates that they have what it takes to become tomorrow's world technology leaders."

More than 7,109 teams representing 1,838 universities from almost 90 countries competed in the competition’s regionals this fall, with only the top 103 three-person teams advancing to the finals. This is the seventh consecutive year that a UBC team has advanced to the ICPC world finals. UBC had their best showing  in 2006, when the team finished 13th. Last year the team finished 34th.

Shanghai Jiaotong University took first place this year, solving seven of 12 problems. Waterloo finished tied for 14th place seconds behind UBC, and the University of Alberta earned an honourable mention.

The competition challenges the students' problem-solving and business savvy—packing a semesters’ worth of curriculum into a five-hour intellectual sprint. Teams build systems to solve a dozen problems modeled after real-world business challenges such as cracking complex password codes or re-architecting space plans. Teams must submit solutions as programs in C, C++ or Java. 

Students from the St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics (Russia), Tsinghua University (China) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have dominated the competition in recent years. The team is coached by Anton Likhtarov, a Computer Science master's student and veteran of the 2007 and 2008 World Finals and 2009 Regional competition.

The annual competition is headquartered at Baylor University and sponsored by IBM. 

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest 2010 Results
 http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Results%20World%20Finals%20…

UBC Computer Science 
www.cs.ubc.ca