Six (6) undergraduate students from different departments at the University of Victoria (UVic) competed in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Pacific Northwest regional programming competition on November 13, 2010, hosted by Simon Fraser University (SFU) on its Surrey, British Columbia (BC), Canada campus.
The competition involves teams, each of which has three (3) students, working together to solve problems with algorithm design and program implementation over a five-hour period. Time penalties are given to teams when they give wrong answers to the problems. The team that solves the most problems in the least amount of time wins. The Pacific Northwest region consists of teams from universities in Alaska, Hawaii, BC, Washington, Oregon, northern/central California and western Nevada. 76 teams took part in the competition this year at five different locations.
UVic’s top team, UVic White, consisting of third-year students Tim Song, Jennifer Debroni and Dan Sanders, all from Computer Science, finished 9th with five (5) problems solved. The second UVic team, UVic Blue, consisting of Jared Griffis (second-year Software Engineering), Brodie Roberts (second-year Physics) and Corey Binnersley (second-year Computer Science), finished 24th with three (3) problems solved. The UVic teams have been coordinated by Computer Science graduate student Tyler Cadigan.
The teams were selected after two individual qualifiers in September, and the teams have practice sessions every Friday afternoon since then. They also participated in practice competitions every weekend since October.
For UVic ICPC activities, see http://www.csc.uvic.ca/icpc and join the UVic programming club at http://groups.google.com/group/uvicicpc
Congratulations to the UVic teams and thanks a lot to Tyler!