A team of three UCLA computer science students placed second at the 2018 Southern California Regional of the International Collegiate Programming Contest. The contest was held at Riverside Community College on November 10.
Each competing team of three students, sharing one computer, tries to solve as many of the eleven problems posed as they can in five hours. The members of the second-place UCLA team, Andy Shih, David Hou, and player/coach Zhouheng (Jeffrey) Sun, solved nine problems in significantly less time than the two other teams that solved nine problems; the winning USC team solved ten.
While a USC team edged past UCLA’s second place team in the final hour of the contest, UCLA had the strongest performance overall. The four teams it sent placed second, fourth, tenth, and eleventh out of the 98 teams competing. No other school had more than two teams in the top dozen.
Ironically, the UCLA computer science department had a hand in USC’s win as well. Both of the USC coaches at the contest earned their doctorates from UCLA.
More details about the ICPC Southern California Regional can be found here.