November 19, 2025

RIT hosts regional competition of International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC)

RIT students competing in regional round of International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC)

Professors in RIT’s computer science department, Ivona Bezakova and Zack Butler, successfully organized this year’s Northeast North America (NENA) regional round of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). The ICPC is a world-wide algorithmic programming contest, where teams of up to three contestants from the same university attempt to solve as many challenging problems as possible on a single computer in a time span of five hours. The top three universities from each region, as well as an additional three universities from the combined three-region scoreboard, advance to the next round of the contest, the North America Championship. The championship winners then advance to the World Finals.

“Overall, both from the organizational side and the contestant side, we feel the event was a great success,” professor Bezakova remarks.

Professor Bezakova and professor Butler served as the NENA Regional Contest Directors; a large geographical region spanning New York, New England, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. They also collaborated with the East Central and the Greater New York regions so that each ICPC contest could be held on the same day with the same problem set.

After months of preparations, the NENA Regional Contest took place concurrently at eight sites throughout the region on Sunday, November 9th. 96 teams from 28 universities participated. Six different teams represented RIT this year, with its top team placing 10th. RIT as a whole ranked 7th in the region, behind MIT, Harvard, Boston University, Northeastern, Amherst College, and University of Rochester.