Duke Participants

Duke programmers took top honors at this year's Mid-Atlantic Region ACM Programming contest. Out of 157 participating teams competing from nine sites up and down the East Coast, Duke took first, second, and fourth place.

"Duke was impressive," says director of the Duke site, Professor Susan Rodger. The winning team -- a trio of veteran undergraduates, Joshua Lund, Bo Waggoner, and Kevin Kauffman -- is guaranteed a spot at the international contest in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in February.

Josh Lund, Bo Waggoner, Kevin Kauffman

Lisa Gutermuth, Sam Baek, Michael Zhou

Sterling Dorminey, Siyang Chen, Jared Nelson

Ethan Goh, Joe Keefer, Henry Qin

On Saturday, November 6th, Duke hosted 25 regional teams for the five-hour competition. Four teams of Duke undergraduates competed this year, many of which prepared for the competition in CompSci 149S, a half-credit class offered by Professor Owen Astrachan, the Duke coach for the event. Students were assisted by undergraduate Siyang Chen, who previously attended the world finals twice for Duke. "He helped tremendously with the teams, arguably making all the difference in getting them to practice hard," says Astrachan.

"The class and the scrimmages we do to prepare make a huge difference, as these kinds of problems take practice," adds Alex Kritchevsky, a member of Duke's second place team and a first-time participant in the competition.

The competition began at noon after practice and lunch. This year's problem set was difficult but doable, says Lund, a member of the winning team. "We started by all taking our own problems, but in the last hour we were all working on the same problem, trying to get it done before the contest was over," he says. The team won by successfully completing five of the eight problems. The second place team, made up of Kritchevsky, Sterling Dorminey, and Jared Nelson, completed four. The fourth place team of Joe Keefer, Henry Qin, and Ethan Goh also completed four problems.

"Duke had an exceptional showing," says Lund. "All four teams we put out there excelled."