Press Release – February 15, 2008  

For Immediate Release

Phillips Academy from Andover, MA, won the Twentieth Annual Invitational High School Programming Contest at St. Bonaventure University held on Friday, February 15, 2008.  The Phillips Academy team solved eight out of nine problems correctly and did it in a total of 720 minutes.  Union-Endicott High School from Endicott, NY, placed second, solving six problems in a total of 398 minutes.  Fairport High School from Fairport, NY, placed third, correctly solving five problems in a total of 406 minutes.  This was the second consecutive year that Phillips Academy has won the competition.

Teams consist of up to four team members, all of whom must be enrolled at their respective high schools.  Teams were given a set of nine problems, a computer in one of the University’s labs, and three hours in which to solve as many of the problems as possible.  Teams are ranked based upon the number of problems that they solve and the time in which they solve them.  Among other challenges, this year's problem set required teams to perform simple user interface computations, to detect tumors within an MRI image, to perform statistical analysis of data sets and to simulate children's games.

Sixteen teams from Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania, as well as Delaware and Massachusetts, competed in the one-day contest which was sponsored by the St. Bonaventure University Computer Science Department.  Also key to the success of the competition was the assistance of Dan Donner, Brian Kellogg, and Wayne Oonk from the University’s Technology Services Department.  Approximately 15 St. Bonaventure University computer science students contributed time and expertise to the set up, administration, monitoring, and judging of the Contest.

During the competition, the teams’ faculty advisors toured Bonaventure's new William Walsh Science Center and viewed demonstrations of the various robots in the Bonaventure Robotics Laboratory.  There was also a presentation about  Bonaventure's annual Girls Day program, an outreach program for middle school girls interested in technology.

The winning team from Phillips Academy consisted of Alexander Dehnert, John Heroy, Jiageng Luan, Benjamin Niedzielski;  Ms. Maria Litvin accompanied the team as their advisor.  The Union-Endicott team consisted of Matthew Asher, Danielle Campanella, Christine Chen, and Ethan Greer; Ms. Eileen Lane served as their advisor.  The third place team from Fairport consisted of Nick Hensel, Alex Reid, Bradley Wideman, and Andrew Yang; Mr. Jeff Krus served as their advisor.  

In addition to the top three teams, the competition included students from the following schools:  Hinsdale Central School, Honeoye Falls-Lima High School, Ithaca High School, Livonia High School,  McQuaid Jesuit High School, North Allegheny High School, Scio Central School, Webster Schroeder High School, Webster Thomas High School, and Williamsville North High School.

Contest results, including contest questions, previous results, and contest rules are now available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cs.sbu.edu/contest/. 

Further information can be obtained by calling the contest director, Dr. Steven K. Andrianoff, at 375-2053.