
Stony Brook ACM programming teams for GNY 2015 (from left to right): Akshit Poddar, Yilun Chong, Sumol Lodha, Yuxuan Shui, Haochen Chen (coach), Daniel Scanteianu, Rezaul Chowdhury (faculty advisor and coach), Nolan Donoghue, Yingtao (Alan) Tian (coach), Hung Pham, and Sina Rashidian. Missing: Stephen Tschudi and Yonghui Wu (guest advisor).		Final standings of teams (21 out of 49) solving at least 5 problems each. Full final standings can be found here.

RATS, the last problem!

Stony Brook teams finished 5th, 15th, and 18th at the ACM ICPC Greater New York Regional Contest held at Queens College on November 8, 2015. Our top team finished behind Cornell, Princeton and NYU, but ahead of Columbia, Yale and everyone else. All our teams finished in the top 40% of the 49 participating teams (final standings).

This year the four Ivy League schools (Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell) in the Greater New York region fielded 15 teams, and NYU sent 4. SUNY Binghamton had 3 teams. In a surprise move each team was allowed to use only one computer this year instead of the usual (nonstandard) two. This was a good decision though made at the last moment in order to mitigate network problems that delayed the contest by an hour. The problemset still remained mostly easy (as usual for this region) allowing top teams to solve most problems (7 out of 9) in less than two hours. But now there seems to be a conscious effort to improve the quality and the level of difficulty of the problemset from next year.

Stony Brook was terrific until our top team encountered RATS (the last problem), and made an unfortunate silly mistake that went undetected till the end of the contest and derailed them completely! Their final rank (5th) was disappointing given that they were ahead of all teams by at least one full problem when they solved their sixth (out of nine), and our own undergraduates-only team solved RATS very easily in the contest. At the end, only Cornell earned a trip to the 2016 ACM World Finals to be held in Phuket, Thailand.


Stony Brook team 1 with faculty advisor and coach Rezaul Chowdhury: (from left to right) Sumol Lodha, Yilun Chong, and Yuxuan Shui.	Stony Brook team 2 with faculty advisor and coach Rezaul Chowdhury: (from left to right) Akshit Poddar, Sina Rashidian, and Stephen Tschudi.	Stony Brook team 3 with faculty advisor and coach Rezaul Chowdhury: (from left to right) Hung Pham, Nolan Donoghue, and Daniel Scanteianu.	Stony Brook team 1 with our guest advisor Prof. Yonghui Wu of Fudan University (who also took most of the team pictures used in this post).

Stony Brook team 1 of Yilun Chong, Sumol Lodha, and Yuxuan Shui finished in 5th place among 49 teams. They took the lead from Cornell team 1 about 70 minutes into the contest, and from then on either Stony Brook team 1 or Cornell team 1 lead the points table. Stony Brook team 1 was the first team to solve 5 problems (see scoreboard snapshot below), first team to solve 6, and the second team to solve 7 (scoreboard snapshot given below). They solved 6 problems in only 83 minutes -- so one problem in every 14 minutes on the average! They attempted problem 9 (I - RATS) before problem 8 (H - Brocard), and somehow failed to detect the silly mistake in the initialization part until the contest ended. They finished in the 5th place with 8 problems while Cornell team 1 became the regional champions by solving all 9 problems in 3 hours and 6 minutes. Interestingly, our undergraduates-only team (Stony Brook team 3) solved problem 9 (I - RATS) very easily!

Stony Brook team 2 of Akshit Poddar, Sina Rashidian, and Stephen Tschudi finished in the 15th place with 6 problems. Their best ranks were 8th with 4 problems (1 hour and 40 minutes into the contest), and 11th with 6 problems solved (2 hours and 10 minutes into the contest). Stephen participated as a member of our undergraduates-only team last year, and will hopefully come back (still as an undergrad) next year.

Our undergraduates-only team (Stony Brook team 3) of Nolan Donoghue, Hung Pham, and Daniel Scanteianu finished in the 18th place also with 6 problems. They were able to solve problem 9 (I - RATS) very easily in the 2nd attempt while most other teams struggled to get it accepted, e.g., number of attempts made by the top 10 teams are as follows: 3 (Cornell 1), 1 (Princeton 2), 3 (Princeton 4), 6 (NYU 3), 6 (Stony Brook 1), 2 (Princeton 3), 5 (Columbia 1), 4 (NYU 2), 4 (Yale 1), 4 (Yale 2)! Still being a junior Daniel will be eligible to represent Stony Brook again next year.

The teams were trained by Stony Brook PhD students Yingtao (Alan) Tian and Haochen Chen with inputs from faculty advisor (and coach) Rezaul Chowdhury and guest advisor Yonghui Wu. Both Alan and Haochen were ACM World Finalists! Alan was a member of the Fudan University team that qualified for the 2011 ACM World Finals by winning the ACM-ICPC Asia Amritapri Regional Contest, and finished 27th in the finals. Haochen participated in the 2010 ACM World Finals as a member of the Harbin Institute of Technology team. Both Haochen and Alan were also members of Stony Brook teams ranked in the top ten (5th and 7th, respectively) in the last year's regional contest. They were instrumental in the success of Stony Brook's pre-regional local selection contest this year (selection contest problemset).

Stony Brook's veteran coach Steven Skiena is on sabbatical this year, but continued to support us behind-the-scenes to make sure that everything went smoothly.


One Hour and 10 Minutes into the Contest: Stony Brook team 1 is leading with 5 problems solved, and Stony Brook team 2 is in 9th place!		Two Hours into the Contest: Stony Brook team 1 is in the 2nd place with 7 problems solved, and Stony Brook team 2 is in 12th place!


Stony Brook team 1 (during contest): Something dramatic has just happened!	Stony Brook team 2 (during contest): Still chilling!	Stony Brook team 3 (during contest): Serious business!

Past Results