The oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest in the world, otherwise known as the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC), will host three UC Irvine students at its 41st annual world finals in Rapid City, S.D. from May 20-25, 2017.

ICS congratulates Dan Chen, Waitaya Krongapiradee and Pasha Khosravi from UC Irvine’s “filter” team for winning the ACM ICPC Southern California regional contest on Nov. 12, 2016. The team took first place out of 76 squads from UCLA, USC and Caltech, among many others, by solving nine problems within a total time of 1,189 seconds. The ICS team, sponsored by computer science senior lecturer Richard Pattis and coached by graduate student Timothy Johnson, will be training diligently over the next few months for a chance at programming glory. If they succeed, they’ll have proven themselves the top university team out of 2,736 schools from more than 102 countries on six continents.

According to the ACM ICPC world finals fact sheet, “The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure.”

To Dan, Waitaya and Pasha – we wish you luck and may the code be ever in your favor!

— Photo courtesy of ACM UC Irvine Chapter