Carnegie Mellon University
July 03, 2013

News brief: Carnegie Mellon Team Named North American Champs at ACM-ICPC World Finals

Team Wins Bronze Medal at "Battle of the Brains" Contest in St. Petersburg

icpcCarnegie Mellon's three-person programming team bested other North American teams and placed 11th overall at the World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The Top 12 finish earned Bronze Medals for team members Nathaniel Barshay, Yan Gu and Jonathan Paulson. The team was proclaimed the North American champion for outscoring MIT, Stanford, USC, Waterloo and all other teams from the continent. Seventeen teams represented the United States.

The ICPC, the world's oldest and most prestigious programming contest, exposed students to key emerging trends and capabilities, such as applying analytics technology to Big Data. In a test of teamwork, speed and skill, the students worked to solve the most computer programming problems they could in the least amount of time.

A team from the St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics - which also was the host institution for the World Finals - was the overall winner, solving 10 problems within the five hour limit. The Carnegie Mellon team solved six problems. Check the final standings on the ICPC website.

Gu is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department. Barshay and Paulson graduated in May with bachelor's degrees in computing science.

Carnegie Mellon's programming team is coached by Danny Sleator, professor of computer science, and Richard Peng, a Ph.D. student in computer science. Jump Trading is the team sponsor.

The ICPC, also known as the Battle of the Brains, is sponsored by IBM. The 120 teams that competed in St. Petersburg emerged from local and regional competitions last fall that involved more than 300,000 students in computing disciplines worldwide. Barshay, Gu and Paulson took first place at the ACM-ICPC East Central North American Regional Programming Contest.

Pictured above, Carnegie Mellon’s Nathaniel Barshay, Yan Gu and Jonathan Paulson practice their problem-solving skills during a dress rehearsal for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo Courtesy of the ACM-ICPC.