CSE Student Takes Programming Powers to Russia

Amid a slew of conventional team names—the Trojans, the Victors, the Wildcats—the NYU Bagel Flavored Debugging stand out. Comprised of Bowen Yu, a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering’s department of computer science and engineering, and Courant exchange students Fabian Gundlach and Danilo Neves Ribeiro, the Debuggers recently landed in a top ten spot at the 2014 North American Invitational Programming Contest, hosted by the University of Chicago. The event was open to the North American teams that have qualified for the 2014 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals, which are being held this year in Ekaterinburg, Russia. 

“The competition in Chicago involved solving a series of challenging programming problems within five hours,” Yu, who is excited about going to Russia, explained. “We had only a single computer and no Internet access, so it was an intense experience.”

Professor Nasir Memon, the head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering—the single largest department at the School of Engineering—is happy to be sending one of his students off to compete. “This is another in a long line of exciting news coming out of the department,” he says. “We all wish Bowen the best of luck at the ICPC and are proud to have him representing us.”