X

Poles win at ACM programming contest

MIT is the only U.S. university to place in the top ten.

Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
See full bio
Candace Lombardi

This year's top computer programming prize for college students has gone to the Poles. Students from Warsaw University took first place in the 2007 Association for Computer Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC) this year in Tokyo. Tsinghua University in China came in second, while St. Petersburg University of IT, Mechanics and Optics, and Novosibirsk State University, both from Russia, came in third and fifth, respectively.

As at the 2006 ACM-ICPC, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the only U.S. university to place in the top ten. This year MIT rose to fourth place from eighth place in 2006. California Institute of Technology came in 12th and University of Texas at Dallas tied at No. 14 with 12 others. ACM President Stuart Feldman said in a statement that the contest has importance and relevancy beyond just the computing world because "almost every major challenge facing our world calls upon computing for a solution, from fighting disease to protecting the environment to improving education." From 6,000 entries around the world, the final round of the international competition included 88 teams.