MEDIA RELEASE

Information and computer science students from Park University and three other universities in the region will be on Park University's Parkville Campus this weekend to compete in the 34th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest.

The "Battle of the Brains" competition will be held Saturday, Oct. 24. Park University, the University of Central Missouri and Northwest Missouri State University will each have three teams, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City will have one team at the regional contest. Each team has three students.

Regional competitions around the world are expected to include tens of thousands of students from universities in approximately 90 countries on six continents for an all-out "battle of the brains." One hundred regional champions will meet when the contest culminates Feb. 1-6, 2010, in Harbin, China.

At the regional competitions, teams will be challenged to use their programming skills and rely on their mental endurance to solve complex, real world problems under a grueling deadline. The team that solves the most problems correctly in the least amount of time could earn a coveted spot in the World Finals.

For more information on the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, contact Amanda Carl at (215) 790-4370 or acarl@tierneyagency.com, or Wen Hsin, Ph.D., associate professor of information and computer science, at (816) 584-6447 or wen.hsin@park.edu.