UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 22, Page 7
February 29, 1996
Among the best; UD team places 7th in international programming

     A University team of three undergraduates placed seventh in an
international computer programming contest, held Feb. 17 in
Philadelphia.
     Of the 1,001 teams from four continents who competed last fall at
regional contests, 43 teams advanced to the international finals.
     On Feb. 17, Delaware's team solved five of seven challenging
programming problems in the five-hour time period, earning a position
in the 10-way draw for seventh place. Ranking was based on the number
of problems answered correctly and the time it took to solve them.
     Team members included Terry Haddock, a junior majoring in
computer and information sciences from Townsend; Geoffrey Pease, a
junior electrical engineering major from Newark; and David Stabosz, a
senior electrical engineering major from Newark.
     Sharing seventh place with the Delaware team were teams from
Albert-Ludwigs Universitat, Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, the universities of Auckland and Toronto, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University and Simon Fraser, Comenius,
Columbia and Carnegie-Mellon universities.
     Team coach David Saunders, computer and information sciences at
the University, called the UD team's performance "outstanding." He
said the problems that the teams solve are often posed in a game-like
setting.
     "For example, one problem is called 'Cutting Corners,'" he said,
"which involves finding the shortest route for a bicycle messenger.
The messenger must obey certain rules of the road such as not riding
through walls of buildings. The input to the program is a description
of the town (positions and shapes of the buildings), with the starting
point and destination. The output is a description of the shortest
valid route.The program must be written so that it works correctly
when given the description of any town."
     The University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University
teams solved six of the seven computing problems, earning first and
second place, respectively. Also solving six problems correctly were
the teams from the University of Waterloo (third) and the University
of Sofia (fourth). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the
University of Queensland teams answered five problems in a shorter
period of time to take fifth and sixth places, respectively.
     The competition was sponsored by ACM, the professional
organization for computer researchers and software developers.
                                                        -Cornelia Weil