Top Collegiate Computer Programmers Compete at RIT, Nov. 1

The oldest, largest and most prestigious computer programming competition in the world is coming to Rochester Institute of Technology. Students from 12 colleges and universities from the Northeast United States and Canada will test their mental endurance and computer programming skills during the regional finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest on Saturday, Nov. 1.

The contest requires students to solve a list of complex real world problems within a certain time frame. In addition to relying on programming skills, teams must solve various problems by working together. The winning team will advance to the world finals in Stockholm, Sweden, next April. The competition begins at 10 a.m. in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. It concludes with an awards ceremony at 3:45 p.m. in the Golisano College auditorium.

The event, which is sponsored by IBM, consists of teams from RIT, University of Rochester, SUNY Binghamton, Brown, Concordia, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Harvard, MIT, McGill, Saint Mary’s University, University of New Brunswick and Memorial University of New Foundland. Each of the 12 teams emerged from a field of over 300,000 students in computing disciplines worldwide and then survived the first round of the competition, which was held earlier this fall.