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ASU Computer Science Students in ‘Battle of the Brains’

October 24, 2011

A team of Angelo State University computer science students will compete in the regional round of the 36th annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) on Saturday, Oct. 29, at Baylor University in Waco.

The ASU team will compete in South Central Regional Contest of the “Battle of the Brains” against teams from Baylor, Rice University, Southwestern University, Texas A&M University, Trinity University, University of Texas at Dallas and University of North Texas.

Each team is made up of three students who will be challenged to use their computer programming skills and mental endurance to solve complex, real-world problems under a five-hour deadline. The team that solves the most problems correctly in the least amount of time will win a spot at the ACM-ICPC World Finals May 14-18 in Warsaw, Poland.

Members of the ASU ProgRAMmers team are Mat Gray, Zach Holley and Quincy Willis, plus alternates Paritosh Bhatnagar and James Dixon. They will be accompanied to the regional contest by faculty sponsor Dr. Rob LeGrand, ASU assistant professor of computer science. Thousands of students from 90 countries are expected to compete in the worldwide regional competitions.

ASU teams have been competing at the regional level since 1986 and have consistently fared well, though not advancing to the World Finals. In 2010, ASU had its best showing since 1996 when it placed first out of five undergraduate-only teams and 27th out of 71 teams overall.

Last year, 24,915 students on 8,305 teams representing 2,070 universities in 88 countries participated in the regional contests. Two teams from universities in China, one from Russia and one from the University of Michigan were the 2011 gold medal winners at the World Finals.