2008 Woodie Awards
UCF team wins Battle of the Brains
Shaun Bevan
Issue date: 11/5/08 Section: News
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Team "UCF Hypersolution" placed first among 65 teams in the southeast region of the United States on Oct. 25, securing themselves a spot as one of the 100 universities to compete in world finals in Stockholm, Sweden, in April. The four other UCF teams placed among the Top 10 in the region.
"For 26 years, we have always finished in the top 3 in the Southeast Regional Contest," team faculty adviser Dr. Ali Orooji said in an e-mail message. "Our record is matched by no other school in our region."
The 33rd annual Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest pits teams composed of three university students against each other in a five-hour competition to solve a set of complex problems with computer programming.
The team that solves the most problems before the deadline wins the contest. At Florida Tech, UCF Hypersolution won by solving five out of 10 problems. Most teams solved three or four problems, and the point structure placed UCF Hypersolution ahead of other teams that solved five problems.
UCF Hypersolution consists of veteran UCF programmers who have been competing in the Battle of the Brains for more than three years. The team consists of programmers Stephen Fulwider, Jeremy Elbourn, Michael Do and coach Chris Gouge. Fulwider and Elbourn were both on the UCF team that competed in last year's world finals in Alberta, Canada, where it received an honorable mention.
UCF's team will be one of the 100 teams chosen from more than 2,000 universities from 83 countries to go to the world finals.
In previous World Finals, UCF has placed as high as second, fourth, and fifth, placing them as one of the top 1 percent of competing universities in the world, Orooji said.
"UCF has been remarkable. They're right up there with the elite schools in the nation," IBM Sponsorship Executive Doug Heintzman said.
Since the beginning of the fall semester, the team has been doing 5-hour practices and 3-hour lectures every Saturday to prepare for the competition. Every weeknight, they would do a 2-hour online training session, Elbourn said.
With all the preparation, they are still able to balance school and work along with the competition. But whatever happens in April, if the team doesn't come home with any awards or bragging rights, they will still have the programming competition experience that a number of job employers are looking for. The experience shows that a person can deliver a program, under pressure, that works according to specifications, Gouge said.
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