By Melanie Supersano

11/26/03 - University of Nevada, Reno's computer science students programmed their way to third place overall -- beating California's Berkeley and Davis -- in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Intercollegiate Programming Contest Nov. 15 in Fresno, Calif.

The annual competition provides college students with opportunities to interact with students from other universities and to sharpen and demonstrate their problem-solving, programming, and teamwork skills. The contest provides a platform for ACM, industry, and academia to encourage and focus public attention on the next generation of computing professionals as they pursue excellence.

Nevada competes in the Pacific Northwest Regional Programming Contest (PACNW), which was sponsored by IBM. This year the PACNW was composed of 82 teams from 34 schools.

"This year, we did exceptionally well, our best placing to date, said team captain and coach Brian Westphal, 23, of Reno. "As a school, we placed third, losing only to the University of British Columbia and Stanford. This means that we beat out such reputable universities such as U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Davis, the University of Washington and many others.

Nevada's silver team solved five of the nine contest problems within the given five-hour time frame. Silver's members were Westphal, master's candidate in computer science; Jeff Stuart, 21, of Reno, computer science major; and Deanna Needell, 22, of Reno, a double major in math and computer science. Silver came in sixth place behind three British Columbia teams and two Stanford teams. Silver was within 10 minutes of taking the fifth position.

Nevada will be acknowledged by the association with a plaque. Nevada's blue team solved three problems and was in 30th place, Nevada's white team solved two problems and was in 51st place.

Nevada's blue team consisted of Chris Miles, 21, of Reno; Sean Gilliland, 22, of Carson City; and David Gobaud, 19, of Reno. Nevada's white team: Jigna Bhatt, 24, of Reno; Dawn Haddan, 21, of Reno; and Michael Penick, 21, of Henderson.