A team of computer science students from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo captured the Division IIsite championship award at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Intercollegiate Programming Contest, held on November 16.
Nolan Brophy, Carina de Pillis-Shintaku and Melodi Harada Solmerin took home the site championship award. They also placed 41st in the Pacific Northwest region.
“It was great to see everyone come together and spend a day working on problems regardless of who won,” said Keith Edwards, computer science professor at UH Hilo and the team’s advisor.
Another UH Hilo team, featuring Marianne Martinez, Sebastian Carter and Joseph Winkie, secured a bronze medal.
UH Hilo hosted the competition for the first time, bringing together 15 teams from schools such as Hawaiʻi Pacific University, and Brigham Young University–Hawaiʻi.
“Teams of three students worked intensively for five hours using just one computer to solve 10–12 complex programming problems,” Edwards said.
The contest is among the oldest and most notable programming competitions in the world. This year, 154 teams participated in the Pacific Northwest Regional, representing schools from Hawaiʻi, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.
UH Hilo’s teams were coached by Edwards, Winston Wu, (assistant professor, computer science), Ramon Figueroa-Centeno (associate professor, mathematics) and education graduate student Allan Simeon Jr. Computer science specialist Francis Cristobal assisted with technical support.
