Programming teams from the Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at the U of A competed at the 2022-2023 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest mid-central regionals hosted by the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith on Feb. 25.

Five teams of three students each traveled to Fort Smith with computer science and computer engineering professor John Gauch. The students competed against 16 Fort Smith teams and 92 teams across the mid-central region to find the correct solutions to as many programming challenges as possible in a five-hour period.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is the largest college programming contest in the world. This portion of the contest was tier one in a two-tier format in which the winners of the regional contest will move on to the world contest. The competition fosters a combination of creativity, teamwork and innovation to build software under immense pressure. All the problems were created specifically for the competition and are comparable to problems assessed in upper-level computer science and computer engineering courses.

U of A students showed up in full force to the contest. First place at the Fort Smith site went to "razorback3" members Alex Prosser, Creighton France and Giorgi Tchabukiani. Out of the 92 mid-central region teams, they placed 31.

Two other teams completed the contest in the top six in Fort Smith — "razorback2" with Garrett Whitehead, Jan Bobda and Vincent Tran; and "razorback5" with Gavin Edens, Luke Simmons and Ogden Wells. The teams "razorback 1" with Ananya Vangoor, Donna Thakadipuram and Nicholas DeVilliers; and "razorback 6" with Matthew Shepard, Rithyka Heng and Daniel Whitmire successfully completed several programs within the five-hour time limit.

The competition encourages students to build stronger skills in computer science and engineering as they become the world's next problem solvers. Congratulations to our competing teams!