International Programming Contest Draws Students to YSU

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The International Collegiate Programming Contest, an annual multitiered competitive programming competition, held the East Central North America regional competition on the campus of Youngstown State University earlier this month.

The competition drew 32 teams to the YSU campus Nov. 10-11.

The East Central regional is open to all colleges and universities in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana (except the Greater Chicago area), western and central Pennsylvania and eastern Ontario.

“Competitive programming is a unique sport where contestants rapidly devise software solutions to problems of varying complexity that run within time and space limits,” said Robert Kramer, associate professor in the school of computer science, information and engineering technology. “Contestants are judged on whether or not their solutions provide correct answers to testing data and how long it took the contestants to achieve their solution.”

Kramer also serves as the regional director of the ECNA regional contest.

This year the YSU site hosted students from 12 universities in the ECNA region, including Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania State University, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University. One student team from YSU also competed. 

Students in the Master of Computing and Information Systems program volunteered to support the competition. Brandon Latronica of YSU IT Services provided IT support.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.