SD Mines Places Ninth in North American Programming Contest

RAPID CITY, S.D. – The top-scoring South Dakota School of Mines & Technology student programming team placed ninth out of 223 teams in the North Central North American Regional Programming Contest, which included both United States and Canadian teams. SD Mines had five of the top seven teams in South Dakota, with the best four finishing in the top 10 percent of the region and all five teams in the top 20 percent. The invitational contest prepares teams for competition in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals, known as the Olympics of computer science, to be held in Thailand this May.

SD Mines’ top scoring team in ninth place included master’s student in computational sciences and robotics Rachel Krohn, Littleton, Colo.; senior computer science major Dan Andrus, Spearfish; and senior computer science and applied and computational mathematics Matthew Dyke, Hartford. Other teams scored 14th, 18th, 23rd and 38th.

Other team members are:

• Junior computer science and applied computational mathematics major Bryon Glass College Park, Md.
• Senior computer engineering and computer science major Dylan Geyer, Rapid City
• Sophomore computer science major Andrew Stelter, Mankato, Minn.
• Junior computer science major Cheldon Coughlen, Savage, Minn.
• Junior computer science major Ken Petry, Gillette, Wyo.
• Sophomore mechanical engineering major Christina Taylor, Rapid City
• Sophomore computer science and applied and computational mathematics Chris Navarro, Sammamish, Wash.
• Sophomore computer science major Micha Picasso, Sioux Falls
• Freshman computer science and applied and computational mathematics major Mattew Schallenkamp, Brookings
• Senior computer science and applied and computational mathematics major Noah Brubaker, Lincoln, Neb.
• Junior computer science major Logan Lembke, Chadron, Neb.
• Sophomore computer science major Jared Johnson, Rapid City

The ICPC is the oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest in the world, according to the ICPC fact sheet. In the regional contest, teams had five hours to solve nine problems.