News Story

UMD Freshmen Take Second Place in Global "Code Wars"

On Jan. 26, 17 teams comprised of more than 60 University of Maryland students competed in the 2013 Windward Code Wars, a day-long competition that gathers students from top universities around the world to analyze a programming problem, create a solution and pit their skills against each other.

Participating teams were challenged to write a code—or create “orders”—for an A.I. in the following scenario:

“Welcome to the booming city of Windwardopolis. The largest high-tech companies all have corporate headquarters here in Windwardopolis. You own a limousine service with one limo (yes it’s a small operation, but a proud one). These CEOs need to travel to the other corporate headquarters. Your job is to provide them the transportation from one location to the next. And to do so with a smile – no one likes an unhappy driver.”

The teams accumulated points based on how optimally their code transported the passengers to each of the locations.

During the competition, UMD students put their codes to the test against hundreds of students from schools around the world. Two of the university’s teams, “String Theory” and “Terps,” made it to the quarter-final and semi-final rounds before team “String Theory” took second place in the final competition.

“String Theory,” a team of UMD Computer Science and Computer Engineering freshmen, included Eric Jeney, Brendan Rowan, Daniel Sun, Matt Bender and Kevin Harrison. Each member of “String Theory” won an HP laptop and a Microsoft Kinect.

January 30, 2013