Northwestern (Team Mildcat) Wins 2014 ACM ICPC Mid-Central Regional Programming Contest & Advances to World Finals

The "Mildcats", a team consisting of NU EECS Undergraduate Students Zeyu (David) Wang, Siyuan Cai, and Edward Kim, have won the 2014 ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Mid-Central USA Regional Programming Contest, held on Saturday, November 1, at the University of Chicago.

It was an extremely challenging and narrowly close contest, as the Mildcats capped an exciting 1 point victory over the 2nd place University of Chicago team by being only 1 minute faster in submission of their code for all correctly solved problems. In achieving victory, the Mildcats have successfully defended their 2013 ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Mid-Central USA Regional Programming Contest title.

The number of teams that participated in the 2014 competition exceeded 140 teams and both Northwestern teams "Mildcats" and "Wildcats" placed in the top 10 for the Mid-Central Region.

View 2014 ACM Mid-Central USA Programming Contest Official Scoreboard Results

After advancing as Mid-Central Regional Champions, the Mildcats next challenge will be competing against their global rivals at the 2015 ACM-ICPC World Finals, to be held in Morocco, May 16-21. Traditionally, the 2nd place team from the Mid-Central Region ("Conjurers of Cheap Tricks", U. of Chicago) also qualifies for the World Finals and depending on the scores from other world-wide regions, the 3rd place Mid-Central Region team ("Quadrature Rules", UIUC) may qualify for the World Finals, as well.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is a multitier, team-based, programming competition operating under the auspices of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and headquartered at Baylor University. The contest involves a global network of universities hosting regional competitions, based upon which teams that advance to the ACM-ICPC World Finals are determined. Participation has grown to several tens of thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines from over 2,300 universities from over 90 countries on six continents.

(photos: courtesy of Joel Wintermantle/The University of Chicago)