Russian Team Wins Battle of the Brains
Three students from St.
Petersburg National Research
University of IT, Mechanics and Optics are champions of the International
Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, held May 20 in
Marrakech, Morocco.
In the 39th annual global programming competition, the
students solved
13 problems within a five-hour period to get what the sponsoring
organization,
the Association for
Computing Machinery, called the "World's Smartest Trophy."
More than 120 teams competed in the final round,
culled from
an original field of more than 38,000 students from 2,500 universities
in 101
countries.
The final contest began with each
three-member
team receiving problems that involved math, logic, graphs, charts,
geometry and
other categories. Each team shared one computer to solve the most
problems in
the five-hour contest, writing a computer program for each solution.
This year's questions included
real-world
scenarios pertaining to efficient delivery of baggage onto and off
airplanes on
different routes, balancing cranes used at a construction site while
finding
the ideal location to place surveillance equipment with several
constraints,
and reconfiguring a sensor network.
Coming in second was a team from Moscow State
University and third place went to the University
of Tokyo.
A team from UC
Berkeley finished sixth, the
highest score for an American team.
"I am excited to see what all these
students
will do with the mastery they've gained from this contest and from each
other
as they continue their academic and professional pursuits," said Baylor
University Professor Bill Poucher, who serves as executive
director of the competition that began at
the Texas university nearly 40 years ago.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.