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.

The competition consisted of nine programing challenges, ranging from the practical problems of "von Neuman Airport's" traffic-load, to the fictitious quandaries of a troubled cheese mite named "Amelia Cheese Mite."

The contest provided each team with one computer, a packet of problems and five hours to solve them. Contestants are allowed to consult reference books of their choice.

"When the judges score the teams, first they look at the number of problems solved, and then look how long it took to solve them," Chen said. "It's best to solve the easiest problems."

In preparation, the Harvard team met for three hours each week, using only one computer.

"They're always practicing," said Karen Bruderle, a spokesperson for IBM, a sponsor of the contest. "These students are doing problems year round."

To gain position on the team, the three students had to beat out other Harvard students in September's Harvard Computer Contest Club team selection competition, which was advertised on the computer science concentration mailing list.

Chen is the team's only computer science concentrator. Conittzer concentrated in applied math as an undergraduate, and Chiburis concentrates in combined math and computer science.