A Carnegie Mellon University team of Nathaniel Barshay, Yan Gu and Jonathan Paulson took first place Nov. 3 in the regional competition for the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC), with the remaining four CMU teams placing 4th, 5th, 6th and 23rd out of 131 teams.

"The performance of our teams was tremendous," said head coach Danny Sleator, professor of computer science. "Four of the top six teams were from CMU."The teams competed at Youngstown State University, one of four sites for the ACM-ICPC East Central North American Regional Programming Contest.

The team of Barshay, Gu and Paulson, otherwise known as CMU1, solved all nine problems in under four hours. "No other team solved that many problems in five hours," Sleator said. "Our second best team, Adiaos, solved eight problems and was barely beaten by Waterloo and Toronto, two of the perennial powers in this regional competition."

Barshay is a senior CS major, Gu is a Ph.D. student in CS and Paulson is a senior computer science and mathematical sciences major. As the top finisher, CMU1 is guaranteed a spot in the 2013 ACM-ICPC World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 30-July 4.

Adiaos team members are Yuting Ge, a freshman CS major, and Yongzuan Wu and Lidong Zhou, both seniors majoring in CS and mathematical sciences.

CMU2, which finished 5th with seven problems solved, includes Jason Chow, a junior CS major; Aram Ebtekar, a Ph.D. student in CS, and Ajay Ravindran, a sophomore CS major. Notably, every solution CMU2 submitted during the competition worked, making it the only CMU team that never needed to re-submit.

The 6th place team, plaidipus, also solved seven problems; its members are Franklin Ditzler, a senior CS major; George Hotz, a sophomore CS major, and Namit Shetty, a master's student in CS.

CMU4, which finished 23rd and solved three problems, was an all female team. Its members are Nivedita Chopra, a sophomore CS major; Soojung Ha, a junior CS and mathematical sciences major, and Alison Kao, a freshman CS major.

In addition to Sleator, the team coaches included Richard Peng and Dong Zhou, both Ph.D. students in CS. IMC Financial Markets once again is sponsoring the CMU teams.