Last year, one Miami University team finished in the top 20 of the ICPC’s East-Central North America Region, an annual competitive programming contest. This year, even though they had a disadvantage as a two-person team competing against teams of three, Huy Nguyen ‘24 and Hiep Trinh ‘24 pushed that ranking up to the top ten. Huy and Hiep are both senior Computer Science majors at Miami University.

Miami University competes in the East-Central region of North America in the international algorithmic programming competition, going head-to-head against esteemed universities in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ontario. The 5-hour, 12-problem competition is an algorithmic programming contest for college students. 

Participating from Purdue’s campus, the Miami CSE team was in eighth position after one hour, fifth position after three hours, and seventh after four hours of intense problem-solving. When the buzzer sounded at 5 hours, Miami finished with a top-ten placement, coming in at #9 for the East-Central region. “We had a good five hours solving interesting problems,” said Hiep.

In the final standings for the contest, competing in an expanded North-East regional pool, Miami placed 14th among 90+ teams from colleges including Rochester, MIT, and Harvard.