by Elise Goitia '18

Knox College computer programming teams made a strong showing while competing recently in their 13th consecutive Association for Computing Machinery Intercollegiate Programming contest on November 1.

Knox, which in the association's five-state Mid-Central USA region, was one of 25 teams competing at the University of Illinois-Springfield site, one of several involved in this regional competition. Knox fielded seven teams of three members each -- the largest overall number ever in Knox College's history of competing.

In the competition, the student teams are faced with the task of solving nine programming problems within five hours.

Team Xray Specs, consisting of students Nicholas Liberko '16, Matthew Lichty '15, and Ben Lyion '15, solved five out of nine problems. They earned sixth place at the UI-Springfield site and 24th place out of 153 teams overall in the entire region.

This finish made Knox the highest-placing liberal arts college in the region.

Other Knox teams that competed were:

• Team Kilo Gram (solved three problems, 11th place): Cody Sehl '15, Marc Spehlmann '15, and Anda Xu '15.
• Team Exa Scale (solved two problems, 13th place): Nick Alfirevic '16, Deyu Han '16, and Zhaofeng "Jay" Wang '17.
• Team November First (solved two problems, 14th place) : Nathan Chadderdon '15, Matthew Skinner '15, and Wenzhen Zhu '16.
• Team Sierra Mis (solved two problems, 15th place)t: Clint Davis '15, Dakota Stipp '17, and Joshua Voravong '15.
• Team Charlie Sheen (solved two problems, 16th place): Michael Gerten '16, Austen Lake '15, and Kameron Wells '17.
• Team Oscar Meyer (solved one problem): Nana Opaku '15 and David Roman '15.

Knox College computer science faculty members David Bunde, Jaime Spacco, and John Dooley, who served as coaches, said the Knox teams made a great showing and continued Knox's tradition of fielding strong teams in the competition.

Knox also had a great showing at another computer science event earlier in the year, where Bunde organized a team of students who competed at the Midwest Conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in College.

Teams of three students were allotted five hours to analyze a list of problems and design strategies to solve them.

Knox students Anda Xu '15, Deyu Han '16, Matt Lichty '15, and Ben Lyon '15 competed in the team programming contest and presented posters on their research. Xu won first place in the poster research contest and teamed up with Han and Bradley University's Nick Luciani to win fifth place in the programming contest out of 29 teams.

The event helped students "see the variety of things that you can do with computer science and meet others interested in CS," Bunde said. "Competing in the research poster contest and the programming contest are also good experiences. It's great for students to talk about their work and show what they can do on challenging problems."