U-M Programming Teams Compete Regionally; Team Victors Advances to North American Championship

March 24, 2022

“Interest has been huge” – This year saw the largest number of teams from U-M in the competition.

Students using computer — The Victors team members collaborate during the competition.

The University of Michigan fielded eight programming teams in the East Central North American Regional Programming Contest, which took place on Saturday, February 26, 2022. One team, The Victors, will advance to the North American Championship contest, which will be held in Orlando in May.

Organized by the ICPC Foundation, regional competitions are an initial qualifying step in potentially reaching the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals (ICPC WP), the biggest and most prestigious of its kind.

“I am really proud of how Michigan competed at regional,” said Emeritus Assoc. Prof. Kevin Compton. “This year we fielded eight teams, which is our most ever. The teams worked hard to prepare, and competed well. I’m delighted that one team will advance, but just as pleased by the effort put forth by all of our students.”

photo of students — U-M participants in the programming competition.

U-M co-coach Dennis Matveyev notes that, “The Victors earned fifth place (and were the third team by school) by solving ten problems in five hours, with 1111 penalty minutes. Solving ten problems is a truly remarkable achievement.” During the competition, teams of three work on a single computer to solve the assigned problems.

Compton adds, “It has been great to see the huge interest that we now have in programming competition, which translated into eight teams – so we’ll also have a great pipeline of seasoned competitors for next year’s competition.”

Regional competition has changed its form in response to the pandemic, and this year regionals were conducted remotely, rather than having teams travel to regional competition sites as was typical pre-Covid. Results from this year’s regionals can be seen here.

At Michigan, the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department’s Departmental Computing Organization, in particular Joel VanLaven, provided key local technical support to enable U-M’s participation. In addition, Compton notes that the CSE Division of EECS provided funding and administrative support for the event, including lunch for students and staff.

Compton has organized and led University of Michigan student programming teams since 2001, and has eight times coached teams that have advanced to the World Finals.

Matveyev, a U-M alumnus and software engineer at Fluid Equipment Development Company, has co-coached U-M’s programming teams since 2009. He has also documented the teams’ activities at competition each year through extensive photo galleries. CSE PhD student Shang-En Huang also co-coached the teams; he has done so since 2019.

The eight teams that represented U-M at regionals this year were composed of 23 undergraduate and first-year students: