Nov 15, 2010 - Claremont, Calif. -

For the second consecutive year, a Harvey Mudd College team has won the Southern California regionals and is now eligible to compete in the 35th Annual World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), sponsored by IBM.

Harvey Mudd College sent four, three-person teams to the Southern California ACM regional programming contest held in Riverside, Calif., Nov. 13. The team of Daniel Fielder '11, Stuart Pernsteiner '12 and Anak Yodpinyanee '12 won first place by solving seven of the eight problems in the five-hour time limit. As a result, they earn the opportunity to once again represent the region at ACM World Finals to be held in March 2011 in Egypt. The three computer science majors—also known as HMC 42— won the regional contest last year and later earned an honorable mention at the World Finals in Harbin, China.

HMC's team of Andrew Carter '13, Michael Leece '11 and Daniel Lubarov '12 earned third place overall. In addition, the team of Max Kukartsev '13, Max Korbel '13 and Carl Walsh '13 and the team of Ryan Brewster '12 and Jackson Newhouse ' 12 both placed among the top third in the field of 72 teams.

The contest pits teams of three students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve—except, of course, for the world’s brightest problem-solvers. Problems this year included atlas pagination, t-shirt size distribution, manual cipher, a "musical" road, triangular redistricting and strategic mine detonation to defend against zombies.

Zach Dodds, professor of computer science and ACM coach for more than 10 years, said that the HMC 42 team is remarkably talented. "They work very smoothly together, each complementing the others," he said.

One hundred world finalist teams will compete for awards, prizes and bragging rights February 27-March 4, 2011 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt at the International Congress Center. These teams represent the best of the great universities on six continents—the cream of the crop.

Each year that one of Mudd's teams has placed first (1996, 1997 and 1998), it has gone on to represent the college at the international finals. In 1997, Harvey Mudd's team of Brian Carnes ’97, Brian Johnson ’98, Kevin Watkins ’98 and Dominic Mazzoni ’99 (coached by Robert Keller, professor of computer science) won the international finals. In fact, HMC is the only undergraduate institution—and the last U.S. institution—to have won the contest, joining a list that includes MIT, Caltech, Waterloo, Stanford, and Harvard, among others.

Since IBM became sponsor in 1997, the contest has increased over 800%. Participation has grown to involve 22,000 of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines from over 1,931 universities from 82 countries on six continents. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. It is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

Go to: Full standings of the 2010 Southern California regional contest, www.socalcontest.org.