The top computer programming students across Canada and the United States competed in the prestigious North America Championship round of the 2022 International Collegiate Programming Contest hosted by the University of Central Florida from May 26–31, 2022.
A triad of programming aficionados from the Cheriton School of Computer Science came in second within the east division and fourth overall in the gruelling five-hour competition, solving seven of the North America Championship’s 13 algorithmic programming problems.
Composed of Chris Trevisan, a first-year CS student, Wen Yuen Pang, a second-year CS student, and Marian Dietz, a CS master’s student, Waterloo’s team was pitted against 49 top teams across universities in North America as they raced to solve the contest’s problems. With their fourth-place win, the team qualifies to compete at the ICPC World Finals to be held in Egypt in 2023. The Waterloo team also received a $3,000 USD cash prize.
L to R: Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor and team coach Troy Vasiga, Chris Trevisan, Wen Yuen Pang, and Marian Dietz. Photo credit: ICPC NAC 2022.
Waterloo’s team was coached by Cheriton School of Computer Science Professors Troy Vasiga and Ondřej Lhoták, and sponsored by Jane Street, an international firm that trades a wide range of financial products.
“Not only am I proud of how Chris, Wen and Marian performed, but I am also delighted how well they represented Waterloo in their interactions with other competitors and coaches,” said Professor Vasiga. “The entire team is especially grateful for Jane Street’s generous sponsorship, which enabled their training and travel to Florida to compete in the North America Championship.”
2022 ICPC North America Championship round • Top 10 teams
The top five teams at the North America Championship round of the 2022 International Collegiate Programming Contest were MIT, Swarthmore College, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Waterloo, and Carnegie Mellon University. Waterloo’s team was the only one from a Canadian university in the top ten.
Dark green indicates the team was first to solve the problem, light green indicates the team solved the problem, and orange indicates that the problem was attempted.
About the International Collegiate Programming Contest
The International Collegiate Programming Contest is the oldest, largest and most prestigious university-level algorithmic programming contest in the world. Each year, more than 50,000 students from more than 3,000 universities across 100+ countries square off in contests around the globe to earn a spot at the ICPC World Finals. Volunteer coaches prepare their teams with intense training and instruction in algorithms, programming and teamwork strategy.
Huddled around a single computer, teams of three attempt to solve complex real-world problems within a gruelling five-hour deadline. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and build software systems to solve them.
In ICPC competitions, teams of three students represent their university in multiple levels of regional competition. Success at one level leads to an invitation to the next. Each region progresses differently, but the result is the same — the best teams advance. The final regional contest determines the teams advancing to the World Finals.
Waterloo at the International Collegiate Programming Contests
Did you know that the University of Waterloo is the only Canadian university to win the International Collegiate Programming Competition World Finals, taking the prized title in 1994 and again in 1999?
