Three Duke students will spend their Spring Break in Tokyo. They'll have one computer, five hours to solve problems of varying difficulty and no chance of earning partial credit in an all-out battle of the brains.
Senior Everett Wetchler, junior Kshipra Bhawalkar and freshman Peng Shi will participate in the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest March 12 to 16.
The students were selected to compete in the contest based on their interest and performance in a computer science course at Duke.
"To be able to be there and think smartly for five hours and get through the regionals and then to the internationals is a big achievement," said Bhawalkar, who also participated in the competition last year.
Bhawalkar added that the students have been preparing by practicing and working together as a team. All three members have also been enrolled in a half-credit, problem-solving course for the past two semesters.
"Just to make it to the world finals means that you're one of the 85 best teams in the world. It's like going to the NCAA tournament in basketball-not everyone gets to go," said team coach Owen Astrachan, professor of the practice of computer science. "If you lose in the first round, you feel disappointed, but at least you made it."
He said Duke's biggest rival in the mid-Atlantic region is Virginia Tech University, adding that American teams historically have not finished particularly well in the contest.
"The U.S. teams tend to have diverse interests, and they don't dedicate themselves to [the competition] with the same intensity that other teams do," Astrachan said. "The hardest part is to have the teams to have intensity in terms of preparation."
Shi said he hopes the team does well, but he is looking most forward to traveling to Tokyo and experiencing a different culture.
"You get to meet a lot of computer programmers from around the world [and] college students from top universities from different backgrounds, but we all have something in common," Shi said. "To meet these people and interact with them will be fun and an enriching privilege."
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