UCF computer programming students were among the winners of the prestigious North America Championship round of the 2022 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) at the University of Central Florida over Memorial Day weekend, beating dozens of the top teams on the continent to take seventh place and advance to the World Finals.
This is the 11th consecutive year a UCF team has qualified for the World Finals.
UCF hosted the event and competed against 49 other elite three-person teams of student programmers from institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Facing off in an intense battle of the brains, the contest pitted teams of three university students against 13 complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors raced against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance.
The UCF team is comprised of computer science majors Sharon Barak 麻豆精品 S�21 麻豆精品 S�22MS and Daniel West, and Seba Villalobos, who is majoring in mathematics and computer engineering. The team 麻豆精品 S� all of whom are Burnett Honors Scholars 麻豆精品 S� finished ahead of teams that included Stanford, Columbia, Harvard and Cornell.
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This is the second consecutive year Barak, West and Villalobos have successfully earned a berth into the World Finals together. The trio was already slated to compete in the 2021 World Finals 麻豆精品 S� which was delayed due to the pandemic 麻豆精品 S� this November in Bangladesh. They 麻豆精品 S檒l now also compete in the 2022 World Finals, which will be held next year.
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Winning teams included MIT in first place, Swarthmore College in second and the University of Wisconsin 麻豆精品 S揗adison in third. Georgia Tech, Rutgers, Purdue and the University of Washington also place in the top 10 along with UCF. The top 17 teams will now advance to World Finals.
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The ICPC is considered the world 麻豆精品 S檚 oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest of its kind. The annual competition begins with more than 50,000 teams from 100+ countries who then square off in contests across the planet.聽In March, UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 team advanced from the Southeast USA Regional Programming Contest聽to earn a spot in the North America Championship.
The competition, hosted by Central Florida聽Tech Grove and UCF, drew big-name sponsors, including the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) STEM, the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) and聽the National Center for Simulation. Students participating in the competition are heavily recruited for positions with companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Facebook.
For more than 40 years UCF has been among the best in the nation in ICPC competitions, and in 2018 ranked No. 1 in North America and No. 10 in the world.
