Five U-M Programming Teams Compete in ACM Regional Contest

Five University of Michigan programming teams have competed in the 2015 ACM East Central North America Regional Programming Contest, with two teams, the Valiant and the Conquering Heroes, placing in first and second place at the Grand Valley regional site.

Regional competitions have been taking place all over the world for students to qualify to compete at the highly competitive ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals. The East Central North America Regional Programming Contest was held October 31st and took place simultaneously at four sites: Cincinnati, OH; Grand Valley, MI; Windsor, ON; and Youngstown, OH. The U-M teams competed at the Grand Valley site.

At Grand Valley, the top five teams were:

1.  U-M Valiant
2.  U-M Conquering Heroes
3.  University of Notre Dame Irish Green
4.  Kalamazoo College Black Hornets
5.  Kalamazoo College Orange Hornets

In the East Central regional competition overall, the Valiant team placed 12th and the Conquering Heroes placed 14th out of over 100 teams.

The U-M competitors were coached by Prof. Kevin Compton, CSE graduate student and former ICPC competitor Mark Gordon, CSE graduate student Chun Wu, and U-M Dearborn alumnus and former ICPC competitor Dennis Matveyev.

Prof. Compton leads students in competition at the ACM-ICPC each year, with teams often qualifying for the World Finals and with one team placing second in the World Finals in 2011. He was recognized with the ACM-ICPC Coach Award in 2014.

In the summer of 2015, the U-M team The Victors advanced to the world finals, which took place in Marrakech, Morocco. That team placed 50th out of 128. The Victors was CS undergraduate Zhou Sun and CSE graduate students Chun Wu and Yujie An. That team’s coaches were Prof. Compton, Mark Gordon, and Dennis Matveyev. Funding for the team’s trip was provided by Jump Trading. You can see photos from The Victors’ trip to Marrakech here.