Team Finishes in a Tie for Second Overall Among U.S. Universities

Furthering their winning effort that began last fall, a team of computer science students at DePaul University made a strong showing at the world finals of the 30th annual International Collegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and IBM and held in San Antonio, Texas last week.

The team finished in a tie for 39th out of 81 teams competing in the finals; however, they finished second among U.S. universities in the competition, behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and tied with Princeton University, Cal Tech, the University of Maryland at College Park and Washington University, St. Louis. Russia’s Saratov State University was the overall champion.

"To have DePaul represented so well throughout the tournament – winning a local preliminary contest and finishing second in the regional, advancing to the World Finals of the competition, and then having one of the best results of any U.S. university – is a tremendous accomplishment, and we salute the team’s hard work and dedication," said David Miller, senior associate dean of DePaul’s School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI). "We take great pride in preparing our students to compete in the global technology marketplace. To perform so well on an international stage is a credit to everyone involved."

The International Collegiate Programming Contest is a year-long competition, in which teams of three students rely on their programming skills and mental endurance to solve complex, real-world problems and then implement the answers into software programs in a timed, deadline situation. Teams that solve the most of nine offered problems correctly are the winners, with ties broken by determining which teams solved the problems in the least amount of time.

Regional competitions were held at nearly 150 sites in 71 countries worldwide, and more than 5,000 university teams participated from around the world. DePaul’s team, known as the "DePaul Monks," won their regional site competition at the university’s Loop Campus in November, finishing ahead of 11 other teams at the site, including squads from the University of Chicago, Loyola University, University of Illinois at Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology. DePaul finished ahead of such schools as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Vanderbilt University to place second in the seven-state Mid-Central regional competition.

Four DePaul CTI students make up the Monks: undergraduate computer science majors Peter Chan and Cosmin Stejerean, and graduate computer science students Dominic Battre and Tim Gebhardt. Gebhardt is the team’s reserve member.

DePaul CTI is one of the most innovative and wide-ranging computer science programs in the country. The undergraduate program enrolls more than 1,100 students and offers 12 different degrees. Approximately 2,000 students are enrolled in its 18 graduate programs. CTI also features a doctoral degree program in computer science. For more information, visit: www.cti.depaul.edu.

DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the United States and one of the nation’s 10 largest private universities. A diverse population of 23,148 students attends classes on two city and four suburban campuses.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For a complete listing of the competition results, visit the official contest site at: http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/default.htm.