The Making of Champions (Nov 02 09)

The world's best collegiate computer programmers are usually decided in February or April of each year in the World Finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). In February 1-6, 2010, the World Finals will be held in snow-covered city of Harbin, China, at the Harbin Engineering University. To qualify to join the prestigious World Finals, a team of three college students currently enrolled in a university (not exceeding five years residence from time of entrance to university) must train under a faculty coach, and come out on top of one of the regional programming contests. In 2009 the Asian regional contests were (will be) held in 15 universities in Tokyo, Hsinchu, Dhaka, Manila, Gwalior-Kanpur, Shanghai, Amritapuri, Harbin, Hefei, Tehran, Wuhan, Ningbo, Phuket, Seoul, and Jakarta, The world's best collegiate programmers usually come from Eastern Europe (Russia) and Asia (China).

On Friday, October 23, 2009, at the Asia-Manila regional programming contest of the ACM-ICPC at Ateneo de Manila University, 55 collegiate programming teams from Hongkong, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines, met and competed for the Asia-Manila regional championship. Ten problems were given, to be solved by each team of three programmers in five hours, using one computer shared by the three team members. The team that solves the most problems in the least time becomes regional champions. The problems were varied, including convex hull computation, composition of polynomials, taxicab distance, expressing a number as a sum of consecutive integers, partial fractions, fitting a quadratic, and classifying typhoons. The contest started late at 10:00 AM and was ended at 3:00 PM. The top six universities were:

1. UP Diliman (regional champions)
2. Ho Chi Min City University of Science
3. National University of Singapore
4. Hongkong University of Science and Technology
5. University of Hongkong
6. Ateneo de Manila University

The champion team from UP Diliman, named "Mga SOGO ni E.T." , consisted of team members Marte Raphael Soliza, Kevin Charles Atienza, and John Eddie Ayson. Their faculty coaches are Dr. Fidel Nemenzo and Mr. Eric "E.T." Tambasacan.

The champion UPD team will join the World Finals in 2010 in Harbin, China. This is only the third time that a Filipino team will be joining the World Finals. Earlier in 2005, a team from Ateneo de Manila University joined the World Finals in Shanghai, China, and in 2006 another team from Ateneo de Manila University joined the World Finals in San Antonio, Texas.