Computer Science and Engineering

UNT took two teams to the ACM South Central Regional Programming Competition at Texas A&M on Saturday, November 3rd. After 5 hours of continuous programming, Team 1 solved 8 out of 9 problems (the only team to solve 8 problems).

The problem set included guiding a laser beam through a maze of objects with reflectors and splitters. UNT teams placed first and eleventh out of 76 teams throughout the Southcentral United States. This is the first time a UNT team has advanced to the World Finals in the ACM Programming Contest sponsored by IBM. The World Finals will be held in April 2008 in Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada.

Team coach Ryan Garlick said, "We were very pleased with the results, in terms of the first team qualifying for the finals and for future events, as our second team did very well also and was composed of all first-time competitors."

Through a haze of caffeine, first team captain John Rizzo said, "The problem set was diverse and challenging but we had a good day." Rizzo added the he and his teammates had been practicing individually and as a team every week for the past few months. The first place team was composed of: John Rizzo, Hector Cuellar, Robbie Mitchell Burke; Team 2: Joey Parrish, Angel Fox, Matt Bishop.