In a down-to-the-wire battle pitting classmate against classmate, Stony Brook's programming team qualified for the World Finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest by winning the Greater New York Regional Programming Contest, held at the Kean University in Newark NJ on November 20, 2005.
Stony Brook's three teams dominated the contest, finishing 1st, 4th, and 11th. A total of 59 teams participated, including twelve representing Ivy League Schools (Princeton, Columbia, Yale, and Cornell), but they proved no match for the Seawolves. Only the winning team from our region gets a guaranteed slot at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest finals. This will be Stony Brook's first trip to "The Show" since 1998. (See our official letter of invitation to the World finals.)
The championship Stony Brook team of Mikhail Bautin, Sajjad Mohammad Hossain, and Justin Seyster solved 7 problems in a total of 807 minutes, fully 153 minutes ahead of their closest rival. Only four teams finished 7 problems, including the top two Stony Brook teams. The number of problems solved is the primary factor in the scoring scheme of the ACM ICPC, with elapsed time used as the time breaker. Stony Brook's championship team submitted its last correct program with fully a hour and half remaining in the contest.
Still, they barely ran out the clock. Stony Brook's second team Amitabh Basu, Dhyanesh Damania, and Ravi Muthunoori desperately tried to submit what would have been their eighth correct solution as time expired. Their previous submission for this problem had been marked inadequate only because of a minor formatting error (printing leading zeros). Had their solution been accepted, they would have been the regional champions, and Stony Brook teams would have been ranked 1-2 in the region.
The Stony Brook's third team of Clayton Bailey-Assam, Gabe Templeton, and Alex Turner (all undergraduates) finished a very strong 11th in the region, solving 5 problems. This is a substantial accomplishment, indeed, as more than half the teams in the contest finished with at most two problems. Hopefully some of these guys will come back to lead our team next year.
Team 1 photo,
Left to right: Sajjad Mohammad Hossain, Mikhail Bautin,
and Justin Seyster
Team 2 photos,
Left to right:
Dhyanesh Damania,
Ravi Muthunoori, and Amitabh Basu.
Team 3 photos,
Left to right: Alex Turner, Clayton Bailey-Assam, and Gabe Templeton.
Previous years results include:
The activities of the Stony Brook Programming Teams are sponsored by
a generous grant from Citigroup.
