WASHINGTON, July 5 (RIA Novosti) – A crack squad of Russian computer programmers took advantage of the home terrain to win 1st prize at the world finals of The Association of Computing Machinery’s International Computer Programming Contest (ICPC) in St. Petersburg this week, while the highest placed American team narrowly missed out on the top ten.
The St. Petersburg National Research University of IT, Mechanics and Optics won the prestigious contest for the second year in a row. The top scoring US team was Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, placing 11th.
The Association of Computing Machinery’s ICPC, also known as “The Battle of the Brains,” began as a contest held at Texas A&M University in 1970, but in 1997 IBM became sponsor and participation has since expanded by more than 1100 percent.
According to the official website, “This year, ICPC participation included 29,479 of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines from 2,322 universities from 91 countries on six continents.”
