For the third straight year, Linfield College computer science students finished among the top two teams in Oregon at the regional qualifier of the world’s largest programming competition. Students competed in the Association of Computer Machinery’s Pacific Northwest International Collegiate Programming Contest (PacNW ACM ICPC) held Saturday, Nov. 15, at five locations.
Collectively, the Linfield teams placed 13th out of 32 colleges in the Pacific Northwest and second in Oregon. They competed against teams from Stanford, University of British Columbia, University of California, Berkeley and University of Washington, among others.
Five Linfield teams, a total of 15 students, competed at the regional qualifier event at George Fox University. Teams of three worked together for five hours, sharing one off-line computer, to try and correctly answer up to a dozen programming problems as quickly and with as few incorrect submissions as possible.
“Despite the difficulty of this year’s problem set, our performance was one of our best,” said Dan Ford, club advisor and Linfield assistant professor of computer science. ”In addition to expertise in programming, algorithms and related mathematics, this contest requires intellectual acuity, stamina, problem solving and teamwork.”
Linfield team members include Cheng Qiang Lim, Menolly Whitmore, Joshua Whitney, Graham Romero, Chris Beresford, Hang Do Minh, Nicholas Maddux, Clay Monahan, Guy Neill, Amanda Gibbon, Harry Bayley, Steven Holland, Lan Kuan, Conner Wells and Tyler Schiewe.
Linfield team members include seniors Cheng Qiang Lim of Sungai Petani, Malaysia; Menolly Whitmore of San Diego, Calif.; Graham Romero of Hood River; Hang Do Minh of Hanoi, Vietnam; Guy Neill of Clarkston, Wash.; Amanda Gibbon of Kirkland, Wash.; Harry Bayley of Portland; juniors Chris Beresford of Phoenix, Ariz.; Steven Holland of Ione; Lan Kuan of Tualatin; Tyler Schiewe of Canby; and sophomores Conner Wells of Enumclaw, Wash.; and Nicholas Maddux of Sagle, Idaho.
ACM-ICPC is the most prestigious programming contest in the world. Over 6,000 students from more than 1,500 universities in 80 countries competed for 300 spots at the world finals on May 20 in Morocco. Competitors must be undergraduate or graduate students and either younger than 23 or have completed less than five years of post-secondary school.
