A team of UT computer programmers will attend the 32nd annual World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by IBM.
More than 6,700 teams from 1,821 universities around the globe competed at the regional level last fall. The UT team will be one of 20 U.S. teams to compete as part of 100 teams at the ACM-ICPC World Finals, April 6-10.
The UT team consists of coach Ryan Pai and programmers: computer sciences senior Andrey Petrov, computer sciences freshman David Wahler and computer sciences senior Pathikrit Bhowmick.
The world finals will be hosted in Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada at the University of Alberta, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary.
Students compete in teams of three to solve problems created by professors and professional programmers. Teams have five hours to solve as many of eight to 10 problems using computer programs.
"In all the years I've gone, I've never seen any team solve every problem," said Margaret Ashida, director of talent for IBM. "They always make one that's nearly unsolvable."
Despite the challenge, competitors said they look forward to the experience they will gain.
"A big part of our practice is improving our solutions - both their performance and their simplicity. I learn many techniques this way that let me finish all my projects faster and easier," Petrov said in an e-mail.
The contest is designed to mirror real world situations that programmers may face. It gives students a chance to work in teams to solve the sort of problems they might face later on in their careers, using the same technologies.
"We have worked with faculty members to get leading edge technologies into the contest," Ashida said.
She said that in addition to the experience gained by competing, the best of this competition stand a good chance of landing internships with IBM.
The UT team competed in the world finals last year and finished near the bottom, but this year it hopes to do better.
"I am most looking forward to the actual trip to Canada, since I've never been there, and we will have some really fun excursions before the contest," Petrov said. "And in the actual contest, we'll finally get a rematch against the University of North Texas."
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