Battle of the Brains Competition Moves to Orlando, Florida

Updated release: May 12, 2011
Updated Feb. 1, 2011

Originally Published November 19, 2010

	University of Maryland undergraduates (Left to Right) Anirudh Bandi, Scott Zimmermann and Holman Gao will take part in the 2011 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Intercollegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals, which will now be held in Orlando, Florida..

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - The "Battle of the Brains" competition has found a new home and a new date. Because of unrest in Egypt, the world-wide programming competition had to be postponed. Originally set for February 27 to March 4 in Sharm El-Sheikh, the venue has now been moved to Orlando Florida from May 27 to May 31.

The University of Maryland will be there once again - competing for the third year in a row. Now headed by CMNS Assistant Professor Mohammad Hajiaghayi, the team will include undergraduates Anirudh Bandi, Holman Gao, and Scott Zimmermann. The 2011 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Intercollegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals brings together more than 100 teams chosen from over 8700 groups that participated in regional contests worldwide.

"This is a very hard competition," said Hajiaghayi. "These students - mostly computer science undergrads - are very smart minds that will need to tackle lots of algorithmic thinking. We are very happy that our team from Maryland is among the finalists."

Hajiaghayi said his student team has continued to train while waiting to hear where the new competition venue would be. "We have had several programming exercises," he said. "We hope for the best in the world finals in Orlando."

Last year, Maryland placed first among all U.S. public universities.

The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a grueling five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems 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 ICPC says judging is relentlessly strict. The students are given a problem statement - not a requirements document. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges' test data and acceptance criteria. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty.

Get more information about the contest on the ACM website.

---

Where is the University of Maryland?

11104