Stony Brook maintained its rank as one of the elite schools in our region, with teams finished 5th, 6th and 12th among 51 teams at the ACM ICPC Greater New York Regional Programming Contest held at Adelphi University on October 30, 2011. We were the only school to place three teams in the top dozen of the field -- accompanied in the elite ranks only by teams from Princeton (2), Columbia (2), NYU (2), Yale (2), and Cornell (1).
Princeton 1 finished first, edging Columbia's top team by only eleven minutes of elapsed time. These were the only two teams which finished all 9 problems. We hung with them most of the afternoon, with Stony Brook teams ranked third and fourth after 4 completed problems and still in third with 7 problems down.
The Stony Brook 1 undergraduate student team of Chao Xu, Kevin Sackel, and Jiajun Wu finished a strong fifth with 8 problems. They would have finished fourth except for a momentary lapse misidentifying the C++ program they had just written as being in Java. Chao and Kevin are just juniors and improved from 16th place last year. They will be a definite threat for the region championship in their senior year.
The graduate student Stony Brook 2 team of Gaurav Menghani, Ji Feifei, and Lanbo Chen were right behind them in sixth place: the fastest team with 7 problems. They got off to a very quick start and held third with four problems down -- but could not punch the eighth one over.
The mixed team of Vincent Tsuei, Jaison George, and Suryanarayanan Balasubramanian solved a total of 6 problems (including one just 9 minutes into the contest) and finished 12th. Vincent is just a sophomore and will be back to give it another whack next year.
Stony Brook teams did accrue a few bragging rights in the contest. All three of our teams beat all other SUNY teams (Binghamton finished 13th), and four of the six teams sent by Princeton.
Coach Charles Ward helped select and prepare our teams in cohoots with faculty advisor Steven Skiena.
Stony Brook Team 1, in action (left-to-right Jiajun, Kevin and Chao) and relaxed (left-to-right Kevin, Jiajun, and Chao).
Stony Brook Team 2: in action (left-to-right Gaurav, Lambo, and Feifei) and relaxed (left-to-right Feifei, Lambo, and Gaurav).
Stony Brook Team 3: in action (left-to-right Vincent, Jaison, and Bala plus Skiena books) and relaxed (left-to-right Vincent, Bala, and Jaison, with books under coat).
Previous years results include: