University of Texas at Austin Students Travel to Czech Republic For International Computer Programming Competition

Members of a computer programming club from The University of Texas at Austin will take part in the 28th International Collegiate Programming Contest in Prague, Czech Republic, in late March.

The competition held by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from March 28 to April 1 will pit the team of three students against 72 other teams from six continents. Competing teams will try to tackle eight or more real-world problems in five hours during the event, with the trio solving the most problems declared winner. The competition is the largest of its kind, and includes scholarships and prizes.

Research assistant Jean-Philippe Martin coaches the UT Computer Sciences ACM Programming Club. The three students are undergraduates Jeffrey Yasskin and Gene Norvak from the Department of Computer Sciences, and Ryan Pai, a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics. The trio won first place in the south central regional ACM competition held in Louisiana last November, beating out dozens of teams from that state, Texas and Oklahoma.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is sponsored by IBM. It began at Texas A&M University in 1970. The regional competitions involved 3,150 teams world-wide.