University engineering students will be showing their programming prowess to see how their skills stack up against programmers from around the world after placing first in the regional qualifier for the Association for Computer Machinery's annual International Collegiate Programming Contest earlier this month.

The contest attracts 3,500 teams worldwide who compete in regionals with hopes of going to the finals in Prague, Czech Republic, said Chris Mullen, Association for Computer Machinery's (ACM) local site director for the mid-central states.

At regionals held in 10 locations including the University, 116 teams from the mid-central states of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee competed on Nov. 1, Mullen said.

"It's an opportunity for students at various universities to demonstrate their programming skills," he said.

Three of the four teams from the University that entered took first, third and 17th place, Mullen said. The first place team of graduate student Tony Chang and juniors in engineering Jeff Tamer and Steve Downing will now advance to face 67 other teams at the world championships in March.

Because of the size of the competing region, only the team winning first place moves on to the finals, Mullen said.

He said that to win they had to solve eight problems within five hours, which varied from basic problem-solving to very complex, but focused more on logic than actual programming knowledge.

Downing said his team was selected after competing with about 15 other students — with the top six being picked to represent the University chapter of ACM.

He said he had never entered a contest like this, but attributed his team's success in regionals to the chemistry between him and his roommate, Tamer, who have worked together before.

"I thought that we had a really good chance, and of course we were really excited to get to go to Europe," Downing said.

Their strategy, he said, was for Downing to act as the problem-solver, while one of the other team members would code the program on the computer.

"I think we really maximized our resources that way," Downing said.

Rick Renfrew, freshman in engineering, was on the team that placed 17th in the competition. He said his team held weekly practices in the computer lab to go over practice problems, and said it paid off.

Renfrew said he will definitely enter the contest next year and will use his experience this year to place even higher next time around.

When the first place team heads to Europe, the odds will be against them as traditionally the mid-central states qualifier does not do so well in the world competition, Downing said.

However, he said, they have a good chance of at least placing higher than the region normally does.