The Stony Brook programming team of Mikhail Bautin, Sajjad Hossain, and Justin Seyster earned an honorable mention at the World Finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition, held in San Antonio, TX on April 12, 2006. Stony Brook qualified for the finals by winning the Greater New York Regional Programming contest in November 2005, and were one of only 83 teams to reach the finals. This was Stony Brook's first trip to "The Show" since 1998.
The team broke out quickly, hanging onto 28th position through the first two hours of the five hour contest. But they could not work themselves free from a seductive-looking Problem A, which also tripped up several other teams. Still, at the close of scoring they were ahead of ten of the 16 other United States teams in the field, beating such prominent schools as Carnegie Mellon, Wisconin, Duke, Maryland, and Georgia Tech. Also to their credit, their ``Space-Wolf'' game playing agent survived until the second round of IBM's Java Challenge, beating half the teams in the field.
Stony Brook contingent with and without Deputy Coach Miguel Revilla of Spain:
Stony Brook team with official Citigroup umbrellas (thanks Citigroup!).
The Stony Brook Seawolves in action on the contest floor:
Dramatic moments at the World Finals. A full orchestra salutes the teams at the opening ceremony (l). Under protest, Stony Brook coach Steven Skiena discards our team's graph paper, ruled illegal for having too fine a grid (r).
Stony Brook coach (l) and team (r) makes peace with contest organizer Bill Poucher. This picture, alas, is as close as we got to the championship trophy.
Misplaced hopes of dominating the country:
Previous years results include:
The activities of the Stony Brook Programming Teams are sponsored by
a generous grant from Citigroup.
