SEARCY — Competing against 135 teams within a five-state region, eight Harding University students participated in the Battle of the Brains computer programming competition on Nov. 6 in Fayetteville.
The top Harding team was recognized for finishing fourth in the state and was also ranked 25th in the region.
The competition, the 35th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest, featured two Harding teams — Harding Black and Harding Gold — working against a five-hour deadline to create computer programs that solved as many of the complex, real-world problems with which they were presented as possible.
Team Black was recognized for solving six of the nine problems with a combined time of 671 minutes, finishing fourth in the state.
Harding Black included senior computer science and Spanish double major Alex Avance of Rowlett, Texas; senior computer science major Weston Castleberg of Fort Worth, Texas; and junior computer science major Branden Paugh of Ellicott City, Md.
Harding Gold included junior computer science major Nathan Gleaves of Nashville, Tenn.; junior computer science major Nathan Hourt of Searcy; and senior computer science major Ben Pschierl of Florence, Ala.
Team alternates also in attendance were sophomore computer engineering major Paul Aiyedun of Lokoja, Nigeria, and sophomore computer science and mathematics double major Daniel Sebastian of Richmond, Ky.
Teams that placed first in their region will go on to the World Finals in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Sunday, Feb. 27, through Friday, March 4.
Last year, the top Harding team placed first in the state and sixth within the region.
In 1998 and 2000, Harding was able to send its top team to the World Finals and currently holds an all-time personal best of tying for 22nd among the top 60 teams in the world.