Destination China: Top Collegiate Computer Programmers Aim for Spot in World Finals

Computer programming students from prestigious colleges and universities across the northeast region of the United States will compete for the opportunity of a lifetime Oct. 31 as they vie for the chance to represent their school at the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest’s World Finals in Harbin, China.

But before they tackle the world’s most talented programmers they must first deal with each other. The northeast regional competition begins at 10 a.m. Saturday at Rochester Institute of Technology’s B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and will conclude with an awards ceremony at 3:45 p.m.

Each team will be asked to solve a list of complex real-world problems within a fixed time frame. Programming skills alone won’t be enough. The problems are designed to force teams to work together. The competition’s champion will automatically advance to the world finals in China. The second-place team could potentially qualify as a wildcard, depending on results from other regions across the country.

The event, which is sponsored by IBM, consists of teams from RIT, University of Rochester, Brown University, Concordia University, Dalhousie University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McGill University, Middlebury College, Mount Allison University, Saint Mary’s University and Siena College.