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A student computer programming team from The University of Western Australia (UWA) has won a place to compete at the World Finals of the prestigious ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) to be held in Morocco in May next year.

UWA's team ‘Mickleback' fought off tough competition from the 12 best Australian and New Zealand university programming teams in the regional (Australasian and South Pacific) contest in Sydney last weekend to be awarded third place and a ticket to advance to the ICPC World Finals.

"This is a great achievement and only the second time that UWA has got into the ICPC World Finals. It is a great opportunity for our students to showcase their skills to the world-wide IT community," said Professor Mark Reynolds, the Head of the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering.

"The University of Melbourne were world champions in 1992 - the only time an Australian team has won. Over the last four decades, the winners have mostly been from US, Chinese or Russian universities.

"At the IPPC World Finals, the world's brightest problem-solvers, including UWA's team Mickleback, will be provided with one computer and given five hours to solve about eight difficult programming problems - it really is a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance.

"These programming problems relate to real-life scenarios such as problems to optimise subway schedules, model air traffic control, analyse logic circuits, track robot movements, map race courses, estimate oil reserves, and so on.

"Students must look through the scenario for each problem in order to discern the underlying essential problem and develop algorithms for its solution.

"Last year, more than 30,000 students from 2,286 universities and 94 countries competed in regional contests for the opportunity to get a place at the 2014 world finals in Russia and this year it was just as tough.

"Congratulations and thanks are due to all involved, but especially (the team of three students) Eliot Courtney, Michael Martis, and Ben Ritter, as well as Dr Rowan Davies, Assoc/Professor Wei Liu and Assoc/ Professor Tim French who have done a great job of coaching and coordinating the students involved."

The ICPC is the oldest, largest and most prestigious global programming competition for universities. The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. The competition operates under the auspices of Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) and is sponsored by IBM.

Media references

David Stacey (UWA Media Manager)    (+61 8) 6488 3229 / (+61 4) 32 637 716
Clara Dodman (Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics)    (+61 8) 6488 7886
Professor Mark Reynolds (UWA School of Computer Science and Software Engineering)    (+61 8) 6488 2279