Fall 2010 ACM programming contest

Three teams of students representing the CSB/SJU Computer Science department participated in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) which took place on November 6th , 2010. ACM ICPC is an international programming contest that takes place throughout the world. We participated in our region - the North Central Region which includes the following US states and Canadian provinces: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, Manitoba, (upper) Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. Teams participating in the ICPC in a given region can attend any of its designated sites. Two of our teams participated at the U of M - twin cities site  and the third at Macalester College in Saint Paul. The rules for the contest are plain and simple: solve the most problems in the least amount of time. The contest runs for 5 consecutive ours. Teams include 3 members.

   Our teams were:

  Team Skynet:    Jonathan Walz,  Tony Ohmann  and  Cong Van

  Team Jaguar:    Joe Meyer,   Andrew Thom and   Kurtis Nusbaum

  The A-Team:      Xiao Wang,   Wenzhi Wang and   Ken Nguyen

(all teams were coached by Imad Rahal CSB/SJU Assistant Professor of Computer Science)

·         At the Macalester site, 12 teams from

the following schools participated: CSB/SJU, Carleton College, Macalester College, Luther College, Gustavus College, and St Olaf College

·         At the U of M site, 19 teams from the following schools participated: CSB/SJU, U of Minnesota-Twin Cities, U of Minnesota-Morris, St. Cloud State U., Bethel U, U of Wisconsin-River Falls, and U Wisconsin Colleges
·         This year, 226 teams from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, Manitoba, (upper) Michigan, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas participated in the ACM ICPC's North Central region; here are our regional results

Skynet Team Picture... Tony, Cong, and Jonathan

  • Team Skynet won first place at Macalester site and 8th out of the  226 teams

  • Team Jaguar placed 15th at U of M site and 106th out of 226

  • The A-Team placed 17th at U of M site and 119th out of 226

Team Skynet was very close to placing 3rd which meant qualifying automatically to the ICPC finals to be held in Egypt this year. The finals bring together the top 2 or 3 teams from all regions across the world. This is the closest we've ever gotten to qualifying to the finals.