Computer Wizzes Compete Abroad

A group of three Harvard students ranked among the best college teams of computer programmers in the world, finishing ninth in an IBM-sponsored competition that took place in Prague, Czech Republic over spring break.

The 28th World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest pitted against each other 73 three-person teams from colleges in 31 countries in a race to solve 10 problems in five hours. Each team was allowed to use only one computer.

Teams must first rank high in regional competitions in order to advance to the finals, which Harvard typically has done once every two years for the last 15 years.

This year, Harvard’s team—consisting of Thomas L. Widland ’06, Gregory N. Price ’06 and Vladimir S. Novakovski ’04—finished second in the regional contest to earn a spot at the Prague event.

“They did well by our standards by finishing in the top 12, which is good in this contest,” Robert L. Walton ’66, the team’s coach, said of Harvard’s performance in the finals.

But Price said he believes there is room for improvement despite the good finish.

“Being in the top 12 is very good,” he said. “There were things we could have done better during the competition, but that’s probably true of everybody.”

The finals, which took place last Wednesday, April 1, featured a “particularly difficult set of problems this year,” according to Gabby M. Silberman, the Program Director of the Centers for Advanced Studies at IBM.

In fact, the problems this year were so difficult that 12th place and first place were separated by a margin of only two problems solved.

The problems required students to be familiar with Linux and Eclipse, which formed an open standards-based platform.

Students from St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics in St. Petersburg, Russia won first place in the finals.

MIT’s team, traditionally Harvard’s rival, was the top in North America and edged out Harvard with a fifth-place finish in the finals.

“You might say there’s sort of a friendly rivalry,” Price said.

But Walton said he was not especially disappointed about the team’s loss to MIT.

“I’m certainly not upset that they lost to MIT,” he said.

“There is a rivalry. We win some years and they win some years,” Wwalton said.

Harvard and MIT’s efforts contributed to a resurgence for North American teams this year, which have done poorly overall in the finals in recent years.

“I was quite happy to see the North American teams return to prominence,” Silberman said.

Harvard will need to field a completely new team in next year’s competition, though.

“It’s the end of the road for all three of us because you’re only allowed to go to the world finals twice and all three of us went last year,” Price said.