Nov 11, 2011 - Claremont, Calif. -

Four teams of Harvey Mudd College students will attempt to outwit the smartest competition in the region during a head-to-head "battle of the brains," the IBM-sponsored ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, on Saturday, Nov. 12 at Riverside Community College in Riverside, Calif. Considered the most prestigious computer programming competition of its kind, the contest will challenge thousands of university students from across the globe to solve a semesters' worth of curricula in mere hours.   After preliminary rounds end this December, only one hundred teams from approximately 90 countries on six continents will have earned a chance to compete at the World Finals on May 14, 2012 in Warsaw, Poland.

HMC student teams consist of Ryan Brewster ‘12, Jackson Newhouse ‘12, and Richard Porczak ‘12; Andrew Carter ‘13, Daniel Lubarov ‘12, and Kevin Black ‘12; Eric Aleshire '12, Benson Khau '12, and Emily Myers-Stanhope ‘12; and Fiona Foo ‘13, Tum Chaturapruek ‘14, and Jacob Bandes-Storch ‘14.

Each year that one of Mudd's teams has placed first at the regional competition (1996, 1997, 1998, 2009, and 2010), the team has gone on to represent the College at the World 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 World 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.

The 36th annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest challenges teams of three university students to use their programming skills and rely on their mental endurance to solve complex, real world problems under a grueling five-hour deadline.  One hundred successful teams will advance to the World Finals in Warsaw, Poland. Since the IBM sponsorship began in 1997, the number of students participating has increased 1,000 percent, from 2,520 to almost 25,000 contestants.

More information on previous contests, problem sets and last year's final standings

IBM's contest page

Follow the contest on twitter at twitter.com/brainbattleicpc