BC CS students advance to regional finals in ACM Programming Competition

Computer Science students from Boston College competed in the ACM Boston Preliminary (BOSPRE 2017) Programming Contest on October 14 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. BC teams “BC3” “BC2” and “BC1” finished 8th, 9th & 16th (respectively) out of 30 teams from 15 different schools competing in this year’s event.

Team BC3 (Xin Xiao, Wang Shikun, and Zhao Yajie) will go on and compete in the Northeast Regional Finals. According to Prof. Robert Muller, "It marks three consecutive years a BC team has advanced to the finals."

Calculating clock skew, determining permutations of Gmail email addresses, probabilities using a “wheel of fortune” in a fantasy village—even calculating an ultra-slow metabolism for a “galactic space traveler” were among the problem sets the teams faced.

“The problems were all challenging. We learned how to model complex problems with basic data structures and algorithms from class,” remarked Shikun (Jason) Wang.  “We also learned how to collaborate with others.”

Congratulations to the nine Boston College students who participated.

Shown here (L-R): Xiao Xin ('18), Yajie (Angus) Zhao ('18) and Shikun (Jason) Wang ('18), photo courtesy Shikun Wang; not pictured: Vlad Chilom, Sazan Dauti, Chris Chiang, Minghao Liu, Zixuan Wu, Zhangyang Wei, Baichuan Guo.