Nov 22, 2011 - Claremont, Calif. - Harvey Mudd College placed fourth in the regional competition for the IBM-sponsored ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest held Nov. 12 at Riverside Community College in Riverside, Calif.

The College sent four student teams to the prestigious computer programming competition, which challenged them to solve eight complex, real-world problems within a five-hour time limit.

Huddled around a single computer, team members raced against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance. They worked together to rank the difficulty level, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solved the problems—all under the intense scrutiny of expert judges.

To win, teams had to solve the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time.

HMC competed against more than 70 teams from throughout Southern California, tackling a semester’s worth of computer programming in a single afternoon. The four HMC teams consisted of Ryan Brewster ’12, Jackson Newhouse ’12 and Richard Porczak ’12 (HMC Hammer); Andrew Carter ’13, Daniel Lubarov ’12 and Kevin Black ’12 (HMC Squared); Eric Aleshire '12, Benson Khau '12 and Emily Myers-Stanhope ’12 (HMC 42); and, Fiona Foo ’13, Tum Chaturapruek ’14 and Jacob Bandes-Storch ’14 (HMC Escher).

HMC Hammer, led by Brewster, solved seven problems and secured fourth place. Teams HMC Squared and HMC 42 solved five problems and earned eighth and tenth place, respectively. HMC Escher solved three problems and ranked 21st in the regional contest.

Last year HMC 42 seized first place in the regional competition and represented the College at the World Finals in Orlando, Fla. In 1997, HMC’s team of Brian Carnes ’97, Brian Johnson ’98, Kevin Watkins ’98 and Dominic Mazzoni ’99 won the World Finals. In fact, HMC is the only undergraduate, four-year college—and the last U.S. institution—to have won the World Finals, joining a list that includes MIT, Caltech, Waterloo, Stanford and Harvard, among others.