UW-Madison programming teams take ICPC by storm – for the 20th year in a row

By Elea Levin

The regional round of the International Collegiate Programming Contest was held remotely on February 27 after being pushed back from November due to Covid-19. Ninety teams from the region competed in the five hour long competition, including four teams from UW-Madison. 

The UW-Madison teams took 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 35th place, with the top performing team being the only team to solve 11 out of the 12 problems. The 3rd place team solved 10 problems, and the 4th place team solved nine; only one other team was able to solve more than eight problems. The 1st and 3rd place team were also each the first team to solve two individual problems. The scoreboard can be viewed here.

In past years the regional champion has automatically advanced to the World Finals, but due to Covid-19, teams will only be able to qualify after the next round of competition. This is the 20th year in a row a UW-Madison team has advanced to the next level after the regional championship, a title that no other school in North America holds. Congratulations to all the UW-Madison teams, and thanks to everyone who made the competition possible this year and to Professor van Melkebeek for 20 years of coaching!

The UW-Madison teams are listed below:

  • teamname or NP = D?(AdjP)*N(PP)*- Champion: Dung Bui, Tanapoom Laoaron, Ziyuan Zhang
  • GNS-Software- 3rd place: Gabriel Chai, Nitit Jongsawatsataporn, Sihan Liu
  • volatile long long int*- 4th place: Ivan Hu, Xuanhao Xu, Ruizhe Wang
  • Exception Handler- 35th place: Yuxiao Fu, Tianyao Ren, Bohao Zhang

This year’s team coaches: Andrew Morgan, Ziyi Zhang, and Professor Dieter van Melkebeek