CS&E Undergraduate Team Advances to ICPC National Competition
Department of Computer Science & Engineering undergraduates Kien Pham, Khoi Duong, and Nont Suphap secured second place at the 2023 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) North Central North America Regional Contest. Their team, emplace_back, solved 9 out of 12 problems, advancing to the national ICPC competition. Two University of Minnesota teams finished in the top 10 of the competition.
During their sophomore year, Kien, Duong, and Nont became friends during their time at the UMN competitive programming club [https://cpp.umn.edu/] and decided to form an ICPC team. They studied various data structures and algorithms, practiced solving problems, and participated in various programming events to prepare for the ICPC regional competition.
“Our team members are highly skilled at competitive programming and we like to work with each other so we get together as a team,” said Kien, a team member of emplace_back. “We have been doing programming competitions since we were in high school, and acquired a background in the various topics covered in these competitions.”
“It was really fun and we could see people collaborating and brainstorming solutions to the problems,” said Kien. “Different people on my team have different approaches to optimize the solution. Also, the competitive, yet collaborative, environment was really thrilling for me. That was one thing that I enjoyed the most.”
The ICPC is a competitive, team-based programming competition for college students worldwide. Teams advance from regionals to nationals and eventually to the world final competition. At the ICPC, teams of three from universities worldwide are challenged to solve advanced algorithmic problems within a five-hour time frame. Each team is ranked based on how swiftly they can solve these problems compared to other teams, as well as the correctness of their solutions.
"Reflecting on the competition, Kien emphasizes the importance of maintaining a positive and collaborative team spirit. “I learned a lot throughout the competition, particularly from working together with incredibly smart people. However, there were definitely moments of frustration during the competition when we didn't manage to solve some of the problems as quickly as we had hoped.” Despite the challenges, Kien expressed confidence in the team's efforts, acknowledging, "there's always room for growth, and in fact, we are meeting up every week to sharpen our problem-solving skills, as well as our collaboration approach, for the upcoming competition."
Team emplace_back will be competing at the 2024 ICPC North America Championship, May 23-28, 2024, at the University of Central Florida. Learn more about the ICPC at their website.
University of Minnesota results
2nd Place: emplace_back - Kien Pham, Khoi Duong, Nont Suphap
6th Place: Gold - Jeffrey Hu, Sasha Hydrie, Andrew Mou
17th place: Gophers - William Walker, Andrew Hale, Elsdon Chang