Computer Programming’s Brightest Compete at Rice

Computer Programming’s Brightest Compete at Rice

BY LIA UNRAU
Rice News Staff
Nov. 19, 1998

On Nov. 7, the region’s brightest young computer programmers went head to head when Rice University hosted the National ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) South Central USA Programming Competition.

The University of Texas-Austin “team A” won by solving five out of seven problems. The Sam Houston State University “team 2” finished second, solving three problems. The Texas Tech University “team 1” finished third and solved two problems.

This year’s contest was the largest ever, with 71 teams of three students each from 40 different universities in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. The top three teams will compete in the world finals in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in spring 1999.

“The team that won was out ahead of the other teams, and that’s pretty unusual,” said Doug Moore, the contest director and author of the problems. “I think the UT-Austin team has a good shot at doing well at the world finals.”

Each school was allowed to send a maximum of two teams to the competition. The teams consisted of at least two undergraduates, and no contestant could have completed more than two years of graduate work.

The four-and-a-half-hour competition was held in various rooms of Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. The problems combined mathematics and computer programming skills, and the students raced to write programs that successfully solved as many problems as possible in the shortest time.

Teams from Division I schools, which have graduate programs in computer science, competed along with schools from Division II schools, which do not have graduate programs. Six teams from three Division II schools ranked among the top 15 teams-Abilene Christian University, LeTourneau University and Trinity University.

“Our basic motivation in hosting this contest is to introduce some good students to Rice,” said Moore, a research scientist in the computational and applied mathematics department. “If we can get half a dozen students to think about applying to graduate school at Rice, then this is effort well spent.”

During the competition, faculty from various universities discussed and debated topics in computer science education. Devika Subramanian, Rice associate professor of computer science, led a session on artificial intelligence, Don Bagert of Texas Tech University led a session on software engineering, and Shriram Krishnamurthi, a Rice graduate student in computer science, led a program called “Programming Languages: The Lost Pillar of Computer Science.”

“We had a lot of help from Rice volunteers, and they impressed everyone with their organization and skill,” Moore said.

Winners were announced at a banquet that evening. The keynote speaker for the banquet, Toby Lehman, research staff member of IBM, described the mobile information appliances of tomorrow and speculated on how they will change our lives.

Rice’s Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI) and the Department of Computer Science also co-hosted the event. The corporate sponsor of the regional and the international contests was IBM.

For more information about the contest see http://www.cs.rice.edu/Events/ACM-contest/.