UNews - Camara Lerner

Programmers earn third-place finish at regional contest

trevor.kenney — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 23:29:12 +0000

A third-place finish led the way for a quartet of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge student teams that participated in the Rocky Mountain Regional Contest of the 2014 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest recently.

The U of L sent four teams to the 53-team competition, with the group of Kai Fender, Brandon Fuller and Camara Lerner grabbing third place overall. The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta finished first and second respectively. Other teams represented Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Eastern Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Saskatchewan and New Mexico.

“The students have done a tremendous amount of preparation for this competition,” says ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge associate professor of mathematics and computer science Dr. Howard Cheng, the team coach. “To get ready for this, some of the students were putting in eight hours per week under actual contest conditions.”

Students are given a series of complex, real-world problems that they must solve over a five-hour time period. Competitors race against the clock, and each other, in a battle of strategy, logic and mental endurance. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and write programs that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve – except, of course, for the world’s brightest problem-solvers.

The past two years saw a U of L team qualify for the world finals, and while this group fell just shy of making it to the international stage, Cheng is excited about their prospects moving forward.

“We had some of our senior students move on after last year, so we’re in a bit of a rebuilding phase,” says Cheng. “What was really exciting was that through this contest, we attracted interest from a number of high profile companies looking to recruit students. These events are excellent career-building opportunities for our students.”

The u of L’s other teams included the group of Lindsay Ablonczy, Chris Thomas and Justin Were (15th place); Matt Basaraba, Lukas Grasse and Marko Ilievski (19th place); and Brandon Robertson, Soraj Seyed Mahmoud and Zackery Shortt (36th place).

Programming team in Russia

trevor.kenney — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:54:28 +0000

After months of training and wins at regional competitions, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Inter-Collegiate Programming Contest team is participating in the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia for the first time.

Seeded sixth in a field of more than 100 competitors, the team's Canada Day long weekend won't be spent relaxing or camping in the great outdoors. They will instead be camped out in a university lecture hall 10 time zones away from home with hundreds of other students, looking to solve challenging computer coding problems.

The international event is hosted by St. Petersburg National Research ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO). Only 115 of the top teams worldwide make it to the world finals.

The events leading up to, and including, the St. Petersburg events are a gruelling series of problem-solving boot camps, competitions and drills designed to enhance the students' ability to work as a team under relentless pressure, the watchful eyes of the world's best judges and under extremely strict working conditions.

The team is on the road from June 27 to July 5. The competition takes place from June 30 to July 4. Team profiles and results will be posted on the ICPC website: http://icpc.baylor.edu/

In addition to sending a team to Russia, mathematics and computer science professor Dr. Howard Cheng is developing the next group of programming challenge participants.

In conjunction with the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals, an online programming challenge took place this past week among 14 teams or individuals.

Third-year U of L undergrad student Camara Lerner staged a remarkable comeback to take second place overall in the open category, following the St. Petersburg State ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of IT, Mechanics and Optics – the host venue for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals.

Lerner defeated Finland's Aalto ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of British Columbia "Purple Puppy' team. Lerner's third-year colleague Kai Fender made it through three rounds, winning against the National Institute of Technology (Warangal, India) and Turkey's Yasar ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ before falling to the UBC Purple Puppy team.

Details can be found at this website: http://icpc.baylor.edu/Challenge/

Computer programming group off to Russia

trevor.kenney — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:14:52 +0000

The recent winners of a spot in a prestigious international computer science and mathematics challenge competition are going to have to brush up on their Russian – and quickly.

A team of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge computer science and physics students, coached by Dr. Howard Cheng, placed second of 49 teams from western Canada and the northwestern United States at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Rocky Mountain competition at the end of October.

The team's success landed three members (Hugh Ramp, Chris Martin and Darcy Best) of the U of L group on the elite roster of competitors at the ICPC World Finals to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 30 to July 4, 2013. It is the first time the U of L has qualified students for the world finals.

Front row (l to r) Hugh Ramp, fourth-year physics, Dr. Howard Cheng, team coach; Back row (l to r) Chris Martin, third-year computer science, Darcy Best, second-year mathematics.

"The team also won a warm-up event two weeks before the regional contest (the Alberta Collegiate Programming Contest) where we took the top spot in the province, and the students have put in a tremendous amount of training into this effort," says Cheng.

The events leading up to, and including, the St. Petersburg events are a gruelling series of problem-solving boot camps, competitions and drills designed to enhance the students' ability to work as a team under relentless pressure, the watchful eyes of the world's best judges and extremely strict working conditions.

"They trained for hours on weekends as well as a few evenings just before the regional contest. This is in addition to the years of practices they have had, including taking a course (CPSC 3200) that teaches many of the topics they had to know for this contest. Top IT employers such as IBM and Google value these contests and commonly test applicants with programming contest puzzles during interviews, so there is definitely a career-related aspect to knowing how these types of puzzles work."

St. Petersburg National Research ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO) hosts the ICPC World Finals. Only 115 of the top teams in the world make it to the final competition.

"This is an outstanding achievement for our students and their coaching and mentoring group," says Dr. Chris Nicol, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. "Howard has done an excellent job of building up the team's strength and developing its real-world experience in mathematics and computer science through these competitions. They have been consistently successful at regional competitions, and that success is now paying off. We wish them well in their future efforts at the world finals in Russia this summer."

At the ACM Rocky Mountain Regional Contest at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta in October, U of L teams placed second, 12th, 28th, and 34th of 49 groups.

The full U of L contingent features: Darcy Best, Chris Martin, Hugh Ramp, Rio Lowry, Chris Thomas, Kim Wikkerink, Mark Hunter, Ian Stewart, Fei Wang, Camara Lerner, Jason Racine and Vince Weiler.

This story first appeared in the December 2012 issue of the Legend. For a look at the entire issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

UNews - Camara Lerner

Programmers earn third-place finish at regional contest

Related Topics

Programming team in Russia

Related Topics

Computer programming group off to Russia

Related Topics