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Yan Gu, Nathaniel Barshay and Jonathan Paulson
A Carnegie Mellon University team took first place Nov. 3 in the regional competition for the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC).
The remaining four CMU teams placed 4th, 5th, 6th and 23rd out of 131 teams.
"The performance of our teams was tremendous," said head coach Danny Sleator, professor of computer science. "Four of the top six teams were from CMU." Known to most as the Battle of the Brains, hundreds of programming teams from around the world participate in the competition, which is sponsored by IBM. The finals are anecdotally regarded as the Super Bowl for computer programming.
The teams competed at Youngstown State University, one of four sites for the ACM-ICPC East Central North American Regional Programming Contest.
The team of Nathaniel Barshay (CS'13), Yan Gu (CS'13) and Jonathan Paulson (CS'13), otherwise known as CMU1, solved all nine problems in under four hours.
"No other team solved that many problems in five hours," Sleator said. "Our second best team, Adiaos, solved eight problems and was barely beaten by Waterloo and Toronto, two of the perennial powers in this regional competition."
Barshay is a senior computer science major. Gu is a Ph.D. student in computer science. And Paulson is a senior computer science and mathematical sciences major.
As the top finisher, CMU1 is guaranteed a spot in the 2013 ACM-ICPC World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 30–July 4.
Adiaos team members are first-year student Yuting Ge (CS'16), and seniors Yongzuan Wu (CS'13) and Lidong Zhou (CS'13), both majoring in computer science and mathematical sciences.
CMU2, which finished 5th with seven problems solved, includes Jason Chow (CS'14); Aram Ebtekar (CS'13), a Ph.D. student in computer science, and Ajay Ravindran (CS'15).
Notably, every solution CMU2 submitted during the competition worked, making it the only CMU team that never needed to re-submit.
CMU's School of Computer Science is one of the world's premier institutions for computer science research and education. Our Ph.D. program is currently ranked number one by U.S. News and World Report.
And recruiters rank CMU's School of Computer Science number one for producing the best graduates, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Related Links: Read more | Rankings | IBM Centennial | Dept of Computer Science | Dept of Mathematical Science | School of Computer Science | Mellon College of Science