Emily Raucci, David Gawel and Max Slavin will advance to the North America Championship this summer. The team is advised by faculty member Ljubomir Perkovic (top row, right). (Image courtesy of Ljubomir Perkovic)
Last week, a team of undergraduate computer science students from the College of Computing and Digital Media placed fifth in the International Collegiate Programming Contest’s North America Central Division Championships. The DePaul Demons, which includes David Gawel, Emily Raucci, and Max Slavin, will now advance to the North America Championship, scheduled to take place in Orlando, Fla., this August. Created in 1970, the annual ICPC is the oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest in the world. More than 3,000 universities in 111 countries compete each year. During the competition, teams of three students work together on complex, real-world problems, trying to solve the puzzles under a tight deadline.
“Two of us weren't that experienced in competitions, but we worked well together,” Raucci says. She has several years’ training and competition experience.
Coaches prepare their students with training and instruction in algorithms, programming and teamwork strategy. The
School of Computing's Ljubomir Perkovic coaches the DePaul team.
In previous years, the top teams from regional contests moved onto the World Finals, where DePaul last competed in 2005. To increase competitiveness, this year the ICPC introduced intermediate North American competitions. The Demons qualified for the North America Central Division Championship after a great showing at Mid-Central USA regionals, where they placed ninth.
“The ICPC is a competition that brings together more than 50,000 computer science undergrads from thousands of schools around the world," Perkovic says. "DePaul’s success in the competition speaks to the extraordinary talent and hard work of our computer science students."
Gawel, a new competitor, took Perkovic’s algorithms course last fall.
"We met every week to discuss problems and we also practiced individually," he notes. "By focusing a lot on building our problem-solving skills and trying out different types of problems we were able to move onto the North America Championship."
DePaul will be one of 30 institutions competing in the North America Championship this summer. Other U.S. teams include MIT, Georgia Tech and UCLA, among others. The results of the North America Championship will determine which institutions move onto the World Finals.