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Engineering Students competed in annual, regional ACM Programming Contest

POSTED ON: March 7, 2021

Six Albert Nerken School of Engineering students, comprised of two teams, competed earlier today in the annual, regional ACM Programming Contest. The six students forming those teams (alphabetically listed) were: Andrey Akhmetov, Zachary Friedman, Chanoch Goldfarb, Jonathan Lam, Derek Lee, and Zhihao Zhang.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is a multi-tier, team-based, programming competition operating under the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The contest involves a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the ACM-ICPC World Finals. Participation has grown to several tens of thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

The ACM Greater New York Regional Programing Contest was originally scheduled to take place in Fall 2020, but because of the pandemic, it was postponed until Spring 2021 and was entirely remote. As in normal years, teams of three students solved as many programming problems as they could in a five-hour period. Rankings are based on the number of problems solved, with ties being broken based on submission times of correct solutions. Most schools that participate in this competition have computer science departments, including computer science majors and computer science graduate students. Typically, undergraduates and first-year graduate students are eligible to compete.

Despite not being physically together at school, Professor Carl Sable served as a coach for Cooper's teams, as he has for many years. Professor Sable said, “I am always proud of our students who participate in the contest, because it shows dedication and enthusiasm for programming. I am especially proud of the students this year. I know that a lot of students, and others, are finding it hard to stay motivated during these extraordinary times, but these students volunteered to participate in this extra, challenging activity. Then, to top it off, both of our teams did great this year!”

Both teams performed well, ranking 8th and 16th out of 54 competing teams. Congratulations to all!

Full standings can be seen here.

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