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RAPID CITY, S.D. (Dec. 18, 2012) – A South Dakota School of Mines & Technology student programming team has qualified for the Olympics of computer science to be held in Russia next summer.
The team of Colton Manville of Rapid City, Trevor Mahoney of Scottsbluff, Neb., and Dean Laganiere of Racine, Minn., will be among 22 other United States teams competing in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July 2013. About 90 international teams will also vie for the 37th annual world title.
It is the fifth time a School of Mines team has qualified for the World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest, “an accomplishment that, as far as we can tell, no other school of our size, and few other schools of any size, can claim,” says Toni Logar, Ph.D., who has coached the Mines team for 25 years. Other coaches are Roger Schrader and Larry Pyeatt, Ph.D. Ed Corwin, Ph.D., also of the School of Mines, served as Regional Chief Judge.
In November, students competed in the ACM regional qualifier against 239 teams representing eight states and two Canadian provinces. SDSM&T’s World Finals qualifying team was among five three-person Mines teams. All five teams from the university placed within the top third of the regional contest.
The contest fosters creativity, teamwork and innovation in building algorithms and programs to solve difficult problems, and it also enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. It is the oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest in the world, according to the ICPC fact sheet. In the regional contest, teams had five hours to solve nine problems.