Students battle for computer science championship

By Emma Anderson

Collegian Reporter

University of Richmond students will compete on Saturday, Oct. 25 in one of the world's most prestigious computer programming competitions.

The Association for Computer Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), known as Battle of the Brains, includes 22,000 students from 2,000 universities in close to 90 different countries. The top 300 teams attend the World Championship in Stockholm, Sweden in April.

Doug Heintzman, a director of strategy for IBM's software group and sponsorship executive of the ICPC, said IBM sponsored the event for many reasons.

"They include first of all wanting to foster a deep relationship with academia," Heintzman said. "Quite frankly the skill in this university population is the future lifeblood of not only our company but our industry."

The Richmond team will go to Christopher Newport University to compete in the regional round on Saturday. They will compete against Hampton University, Virginia State University, the College of William and Mary and Virginia Wesleyan College.

Richmond's team is made up of nine students and is coached by Lewis Barnett, chair of the department of math and computer science, and Barry Lawson, associate professor of computer science.

Each region has multiple sites and the team that finishes the most problems in the shortest amount of time goes to the world championships. There are three students per team, and Richmond won its site last year, but did not win the region.

"Our program focuses on slightly different things than the programs that tend to win," Barnett said. "We tend to have a broader view of the computing discipline. So we don't focus quite as much on the things that put you at the very top of this contest."

The teams are given five hours to solve the problems by creating and testing computer programs. The judges run the program on different data sets and the program has to get the exact output in order for the program to qualify as being correct.

"It gives you an opportunity to challenge yourself," Heintzman said. "The same reason why people decide to enter the New York marathon, just to prove to themselves that they can do it."

The team is made up of computer science majors, but Barnett said that math and physics majors who had programming experience had competed in the past. Richmond usually sends two or three teams each year.

"You only need a couple of courses to make a contribution," Barnett said. "We've had freshmen compete who have had experience in high school and have done well."

Junior Matt Der was on the team that won at Christopher Newport University last year. Der said he was competing again this year because he liked the challenge.

"I really like the competitiveness of it, and also the types of problems that are involved require really tough critical thinking, and analytical thinking and problem solving skills," Der said. "They often require really clever solutions."

It is up to the teams to prepare for the competition as much or as little as they want. Barnett said the teams could go over problems from previous years because the types of questions generally stayed the same.

"Mostly we talk about the things that trip contestants up when they are working on these problems," Barnett said. "There are certain things that show up year after year that are a little tricky."

Der said it was probably a disadvantage that Richmond did not prepare as much as bigger universities. He said some universities had a course dedicated to the competition.

"I guess we are kind of proud of the fact that we don't prepare but we still do pretty well," Der said.

Barnett said he expected the team to do well at the site, but that it would be difficult to win the whole competition. Richmond has never been to the world championship.

"My main goal is for the students to have a good experience, and if they do very well that's wonderful," Barnett said. "I mainly want them to feel like they accomplished something."

The competition also gives students networking opportunities. Heintzman said the championship brought together the top computer scientists in the world.

"It's an amazing opportunity to make professional business and technology contacts with some of the leading-edge technology companies in the entire world," Heintzman said. "I would say it's an extraordinary opportunity and the best opportunity that these students will have in their entire academic career to network."

Russia, Poland, China and the United States consistently do well at the world championship, but not one team always dominates, Heintzman said. There are prizes such as scholarships, but Heintzman said one of the biggest prizes is to be able to put the competition on a resume. He said IBM often hired aggressively based on the competition.

"There are so many different things to get out of this, including setting up their life's work," Heintzman said.

Contact reporter Emma Anderson at emma.anderson@richmond.edu