In a brash show of computer programming brawn, three Harvard students placed 10th last week in the prestigious 25th Annual Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programing Contest's World Finals in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The students, Zong Da Chen '01, Richard C. Chiburis '02 and Vincent Conittzer '00 and, make up the Harvard Computing Contest Club.

"I'm very proud of them," said their coach and faculty advisor Robert Walton. "They perspired hard--there's a fair amount of practice involved to get to this level."

The Harvard team advanced to the March 10 finals by placing among the top 64 teams in a series of regional contests from September through December. The orginal pool included 2,700 teams from 1,079 universities worldwide.

"I guess we expected to do well," Chen said. "In the past couple of years we've always done well in the regionals. I'm pretty happy--we were aiming to be somewhere in the top 10."

Their 10th place finish was an improvement from last year's 22nd place finish, though the top 20 teams tend to be closely spaced.

Computer programming is lucrative--even if you're not entering the job market. The winning team, from St. Petersburg State University, walked off with $3,000 for each teammate. The Harvard members won $500 each, among other prizes.

"Canada's pretty big on hockey, so they gave us these cool miniature hockey sticks and pucks. We also got a lot of shirts," Chen said.