UNews - IBM

Programming a bright future

trevor.kenney — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 21:45:36 +0000

It’s not every day that you avoid being eaten by digital zombies. But a team of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students has proven it’s just the way to earn a second-place finish at an international programming competition.

The university’s programming contest team participated for the first time in the prestigious annual world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). Sponsored by IBM, the competition was held in St. Petersburg, Russia last summer.

Hugh Ramp (left), Chris Martin (back left), Dr. Howard Cheng (front) and Darcy Best (right) put the U of L on the map at the prestigious ICPC World Finals.

The team, made up of Hugh Ramp (fourth-year physics), Chris Martin (fourth-year computer science), Darcy Best (second-year MSc mathematics) and coaches Dr. Howard Cheng (mathematics and computer science) and Dr. Kevin Grant (mathematics and computer science) took second prize in an open challenge competition that required the students to write an artificial intelligence program that would successfully play a zombie-filled video game on the team’s behalf.

The challenge was part of a larger competition in which nearly 30,000 students from around the world participated in regional contests, solving several complex computing problems within a gruelling, five-hour deadline.

In this battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance, each team had to huddle around a single computer while addressing various problems. For example, the students had to quantify the impact of water pollution and determine how to get commuters to their destinations as quickly as possible without traffic congestion. In the end, among the 120 teams that advanced to the world finals, the
U of L students placed third among the Canadian competitors, 12th out of 23 North American teams and 80th overall.

The competition, says Cheng, equips students for the real-world demands of computing.

“You must work together under intense time constraints. There’s no room for any failure,” he says.

What’s more, says Martin, preparing for the competition is often just as challenging as the contest.
U of L students spent 15 to 20 hours a week – on top of their regular studies – practising sample computing problems.

“The more time you put in, the better you will do,” he says.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Best.

“You have to learn to use new algorithms that aren’t taught in your courses. As a result, my coding skills have gone through the roof.”

Those abilities, he says, have given him an advantage over his classmates, who often must invest considerable time becoming proficient at writing computer programs.

Best, however, isn’t the only one whose ICPC experience has complemented his education. Teammate Ramp (BSc ’13), for instance, has gone on to pursue graduate studies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta, providing further evidence that hands-on learning serves as a springboard to future success.

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.

O'Shea recognized as trailblazer

trevor.kenney — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:15:46 +0000

Dr. Seamus O'Shea, a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Vice–President Academic Emeritus and a well known advocate for province-wide information technology development, is being acknowledged, with colleague and fellow "Cyber Trailblazer" Dr. Brian Unger, for their long-term efforts to support and expand connectivity to the province's networking and computing infrastructure.

The two remarkable digital-era pioneers are being recognized today on the eve of their last board meeting with Cybera, which operates Alberta's Research and Education Network.

Unger, founding president of the organization, is stepping down after 19 years on the board. For six of those years he was also CEO, where he led the development of Alberta's networking and computing infrastructure.

As a computing science professor in the early days of the internet, Unger recognized the specialized needs of researchers working with this new technology.

He was one of the founders of the Western Universities Research Consortium (WURCnet), which became Netera Alliance, and later Cybera.

The organization was tasked with developing Alberta's high-end research networks, enabling access to supercomputers provided by the High Performance Computing Consortia (HPCC), and later by WestGrid, which he also co-founded.

Unger was the founding president of the Alberta Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE) from 1999-2005. During this period, iCORE invested $43 million in 17 ICT research chairs, supporting over 500 faculty, graduate students and staff.

Through these interrelated projects, he evolved Alberta from a province of remote pockets of academia to a region known for its collaborative, data-intensive research.

Unger received the IWAY "Public Leadership" Award for outstanding contributions to Canada's information society in 2004, and was named a "Canada Pioneer of Computing" at the 2005 IBM CASON conference in Toronto.

Over the same period, O'Shea was leading the IT strategies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, where he was Vice-President, Academic and Provost.

As chair of Cybera's Board of Directors over the past five years, he has worked to grow the organization to become a regionally and internationally-recognized leader in networking and cloud computing.

O'Shea's work in the early 1990s made the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge one of the first post-secondary institutions to make broadband widely accessible, giving every desk on campus access to the internet.

He also served as Chair of iCORE from 2006-2010 and, more recently, was co-chair of the team that designed and implemented ApplyAlberta, the province's online post-secondary application system.

"Very few researchers actually know the story of these IT pioneers, and how their everyday tools are the result of decades of commitment. Brian and Seamus have helped build the foundations of e-infrastructure in Alberta, which is among the best in the world," says President and CEO Robin Winsor.

"Through their vision and pathfinding work, they have led the research, computing and networking landscape in this province. In the process, they have ensured that Alberta researchers have the tools and networks to succeed internationally."

UNews - IBM

Programming a bright future

Related Topics

Computer programming group off to Russia

Related Topics

O'Shea recognized as trailblazer

Related Topics