Prestigious International Collegiate Programming Contest Coming to NJIT

Hundreds of college students from throughout the Northeast will descend on NJIT on Oct. 27 to participate in a prestigious international programming competition. 

The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), will host its Greater New York Region competition on NJIT’s campus this Sunday. Winners of the regional competition will advance to the national finals to be held next year in Atlanta.

 “Hosting an ICPC event is a tremendous honor for NJIT and provides the university with a wonderful opportunity to showcase our students, facilities and campus to many of the best and brightest young programmers in the northeast,” said Craig Gotsman, dean of NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC), who is hosting the event.

James Geller, YWCC’s associate dean for research, worked to bring the competition to NJIT after experiencing the excitement of the event first-hand last year at the competition at Manhattan College in New York City. “We have to do this at NJIT,” Geller said, adding that with the support of many at NJIT and Joe Terlizzi of ICPC, they were able to make it happen. 

ICPC is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition that includes thousands of universities around the world. Headquartered at Baylor University in Texas, ICPC operates regional contests on six continents, culminating in a global World Finals. Last year more than 52,000 students from 3,233 universities in 110 countries participated.

The ICPC describes itself as an extra-curricular, competitive programming sport for students. Its competitions provide gifted students the opportunity to interact and improve their teamwork, programming and problem-solving skills.  

Connor Criscoe, a senior Computer Science major at NJIT, competed in the competition last year and will do so again this year. He is thrilled the event is coming to NJIT.

“It’s the world’s largest and oldest programming competition. It’s fantastic that our students have a chance to compete with larger, well-known schools. NJIT is on the map now,” Criscoe said.

NJIT will have 10 student teams participating on Sunday and will be joined by students from 23 universities throughout the Northeast including Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, Rutgers University and Yale University. 

During the contest, teams of three are given five hours to solve between eight and 15 programming problems. Competitors must submit solutions using programming languages such as Python or Java. To enhance collaboration, each team can only use one computer during the competition.

Teams are awarded points for every problem solved. In case of a tie, the teams are awarded extra points based on how quickly they solved a problem.

Criscoe described the competition as hectic and intense but fun. He said the problems students will have to solve range from challenging to mind-boggling. “Taking the time to quickly decide which problems to tackle first is key to success.” 

The NJIT student teams are coached by Noah Cantor, who is a software engineer at Facebook and also a visiting faculty member at NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing. 

Cantor teaches at NJIT as part of Facebook’s Engineer-in-Residence program, which is designed to increase the number of women and minorities entering the high-tech world. He also coaches NJIT’s programming team, which meets weekly and has been practicing ICPC-type problems in recent weeks.

Criscoe said working with Cantor and the previous Facebook engineers has been a tremendous experience as he and his team prepare for ICPC. 

“Our Facebook coaches have been great. Our programming team meets every week and pick problems to work on. Graph problems, sorting problems, problems they think will be in ICPC,” Criscoe said. “It’s incredibly useful and teaches you more about data structures and algorithms than you typically learn in class.”

Sunday’s event will begin with an opening ceremony in the NJIT Campus Center at 10:15 a.m. The competition will begin at 11:15 a.m. on the second floor of the GITC building.