COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (Oct. 31, 2005) – Tennessee Tech University will host a regional contest of the 30th annual international “Battle of the Brains” on Saturday, making it one of 144 such sites in 71 countries and on six different continents.

Computer programming teams from six other area colleges and universities will come to campus that day to compete in the Association for Computing Machinery’s Mid-Central Regional Collegiate Programming Contest sponsored by IBM.

“Computer programming has changed dramatically over the last three decades, and this contest has become the arena at which the best and brightest programming students pit their skills and creativity against each other,” said Douglas Heintzman, director of technical strategy for IBM and sponsorship executive of the ICPC.

Each competing institution is allowed to enter up to two teams, each consisting of three students who must work together around a single computer to solve up to eight or more complex, real-world programming problems within a five-hour deadline.

Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and build software systems that solve the problems.

The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner.

“This contest gives university students — who are the technology innovators of tomorrow — the chance to experience leading-edge programming environments while honing skills they will need in their careers,” Heintzman said.

In addition to teams from TTU, other institutions that will be represented at the regional programming contest hosted on campus include Austin Peay State University, Belmont University, Maryville College, Middle Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University and Western Kentucky University.

Eighty successful teams will advance to the contest’s World Finals April 9-13 at Baylor University in San Antonio, Texas.

--Tracey LeFevre
This information posted 31 October 2005