SBCC computer science team takes first place at Southern California programming competition
SBCC computer science team takes first place at Southern California programming competition
At the Southern California International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) held
online on Feb. 27 this year, Santa Barbara City College won the top honor for two-year
colleges.
The ICPC is an extra-curricular, competitive programming competition which provides
college and university students opportunities to interact, demonstrate and improve
their teamwork, programming and problem-solving process. In addition to hosting regional
contests, the ICPC is a global platform that allows academia and industry to shine
the spotlight on — and raise the aspirations of — the next generation of computing
professionals as they pursue excellence.
SBCC’s top scoring team, SBCC Yellow, took First Place honors among two-year schools
in the competition. The team — consisting of Jaden Baptista, Daniel Schaffield and
Qimin Tao — outscored multiple teams from a number of four year universities, including
California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), UC Irvine (UCI), UCLA, UC Riverside
(UCR) and UC San Diego (UCSD).
Other SBCC teams also competed successfully at the event, outranking teams from universities
and colleges located throughout the Southern California region. Their members included
Monica Aguilar, Jordan Ayvazian, Christian Foley, Berkelly Gonzalez, Jack Jebef, Jacob
Lee, Patrick Maher, Gina McCaffrey, Dylan Moon, Riley Peterlinz, Vanessa Ponce, Dillon
Rooke, Wyatt Spivak, Ethan Stucky and Leyla Zokhidova.
The ICPC challenges three-person student teams to solve a set of eleven programming
problems in five hours. This year, 70 teams from 15 institutions in the Southern California
region competed in a fully-online contest. The competition’s first place team, from
UCSD, solved all eleven problems in five hours. Several of the top teams from this
event will continue on to compete in the North American Divisional Championships in
April. Official results can be found here.
“I am very proud of these outstanding young computer scientists,” said Computer Science
professor and coach Stephen Strenn. “It was an honor and a privilege to see their
hard work and team spirit come to fruition. SBCC students’ success in pitting themselves
against students from world-class universities is a testament to the hard work, determination
and intellect of our students."
Professor Strenn extends special thanks to his colleagues on the SBCC Computer Science
faculty (Nathalie Guebels, Jackie Kuehn, Hassine Letaief, Salmaun Masooman, Kira Minkova,
Babak Shahpar, Sharon Solis and Pat Walp) and teaching assistants (Joseph Appleton
and James Howard) for their guidance and support.