Twelve Binghamton University students will be competing in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) "Battle of the Brains" regional competition.

BU's four teams of three students each will compete on Sunday, Oct. 18 at Hofstra University in Hempstead in one of many regional competitions that involve 26,000 university students from 92 countries across the globe.

The top 100 teams across the globe, including the top two teams from the competition at Hofstra University, will be invited to the World Finals in Harbin, China.

The ACM is the largest professional society for computer scientists. Binghamton's chapter is led by Patrick Madden, an associate professor of computer science and an ACM member for 23 years.

BU's teams have been under Madden's guidance since 1998, and three years ago one of his teams went to the ACM-ICPC World Finals in San Antonio, Texas.

All three students were offered and accepted jobs by Microsoft at the competition.

"Doing well in the competition is a big deal," Madden said. "We've got a good shot at going to the World Finals. Our top two teams are very strong."

BU's participating undergraduates in Sunday's competition include, but are not limited to, Greg Stoddard, Jiri Stehlik, Alex Jasperson, Matt Spatola, David Lundgren and Travis Farrell.

Next Sunday, these students will go up against 40 East Coast schools such as Stony Brook University, Columbia University, NYU and Cornell University. In the past, Binghamton has beat out Harvard University, Brown University, RIT and the University of Rochester for the opportunity to compete in the finals.

The contest consists of six to eight problems which are solved by the teams in five hours. According to Madden, the problems are a cross between mathematical brain teasers and coding challenges.

Doug Heintzman, director of strategy for IBM Software Group and sponsorship executive of the ICPC, said, "Teams send in the source code they write and these programs are tested by the judges using the trickiest tests they can find."

The competition is made possible by the efforts of computer science professionals, graduate students and IBM, the world sponsor.

By promoting the ACM ICPC competition, Heintzman states that his company is promoting excellence in the field of computer programming.

"We are focusing on pragmatic ways to encourage young creative students to enter and excel in the field. They are the lifeblood of the industry," Heintzman said. "Such an elite group provides us with a strong hiring pool."

Heintzman explained how the competition focuses on realistic and complex ecological and societal issues.

The problems are created by a large volunteer workforce of top computer scientists, researchers and programming professionals. Then these problems are sent to a committee where they are re-packaged in "real-world garb," according to Heintzman. All of the problems must be solvable by a committee member.

Apart from world-wide notoriety, the winners of the ACM-ICPC World Finals will receive cash scholarships of $10,000. They also walk away with high resolution monitors and computer gear.

To prepare for the competition, the Binghamton chapter meets a few times a week to work on practice problems. They use the online contest site TopCoder.com, and dig through math and science textbooks for problem ideas. Most of the members have been studying independently or as a group for years. The teams participate in local competitions and are sponsored by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"I started participating in similar contests that the Binghamton ACM club runs when I was a freshmen," Stoddard, senior computer science and mathematics major, said. "Each question is essentially a puzzle, but instead of trying to find the answer to just one specific puzzle, we are trying to answer all puzzles of that type. Once we have the general method, we have to formalize that thinking into very small steps so that we can get a computer to perform the computations for us. It can sometimes be frustrating, but it's really interesting, fun and rewarding."

If most of the questions play towards their particular strengths, Stoddard thinks his team has a chance at winning.

Travel expenses are being covered by Binghamton University's sponsors and the computer science department.