Nine students will compete in computer science Battle of the Brains Nov. 5

November 2, 2011

Nine University of Richmond students will compete Nov. 5 in the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) 36th annual International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), challenging the most talented computer science students from universities across the world.

Three Richmond teams will compete in the mid-Atlantic contest at Christopher Newport University against Christopher Newport, William and Mary and Virginia Wesleyan. Using a single computer, programming skills, mental endurance and teamwork, each team will have five hours to solve complex, real world problems. The team that solves the most problems correctly in the least amount of time will be among the 105 teams in the world finals in Warsaw, Poland, next May.

Competing for Richmond will be:

  • Keefer Taylor, junior, Upper Black Eddy, Pa.
  • Curtis Larson, junior, Queenstown, Md.
  • Shaoqing “Victor” Yang, junior, Mount Prospect, Ill.
  • Andreea Iovan, senior, Valcea, Romania
  • Vivian Hsieh, sophomore, Newport News, Va.
  • Sandeep Dinesh, junior, Freemont, Calif.
  • Nathan Follin, junior, Frederick, Md.
  • Gavin McGrew, sophomore, Nashville, Tenn.
  • Joshua Carbonneau, senior, Richmond, Va.

The contest was first held at Texas A&M University to raise the aspirations, performance and opportunity of top computer science students. Since IBM became a sponsor in 1997, participation in ICPC has increased 1000 percent with the participation of more than 30,000 students and faculty from more than 2,000 universities in 88 countries.

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