A team of three Stanford students will attend the final round of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) in Tokyo this March, marking the University’s first international appearance at the contest in three years.

The team won a silver medal at the contest in 2002 and placed 13th in 2004. Coach Jerry Cain, a lecturer in the computer science department, is leading the ICPC team for the fourth year in a row. He expects another strong finish this year.

“Stanford always sends strong teams,” he said, “and they always do well.”

The annual contest — a collaboration between the Association for Computing Machinery, Baylor University and IBM — is a 31-year old event.

The contest consists of a written exam with 10 problems; participants have five hours to complete the test as thoroughly as possible.

“We like for teams to be able to solve at least one problem,” said Doug Heintzman, a strategy director for IBM who is the contest’s sponsorship executive for the fourth consecutive year. “Still, there will always be some that barely anyone on the planet can solve. We had one last year that no one even tried.”

The problems are generated by the same group that judges the contest — a committee that works with computer science professors from universities around the world. At least two committee members must be able to solve a problem before it is considered for inclusion in the contest.

The contest also employs a creative method for announcing which teams have solved problems.

“It’s really quite fun because at the end of the room there are 10 different bunches of balloons of 10 different colors, so whenever you solve a problem, someone brings you a balloon of the color corresponding to that problem,” Heintzman said. “It’s exciting because teams are constantly reevaluating which problems to attempt.”

This year’s team includes computer science coterminal student James Connor, electrical engineering graduate student Alex Utter and Justin Solomon ‘10.

Cain was impressed by Solomon’s contribution.

“He wasn’t on campus two months before he carved out a spot for himself on the team,” the coach said.

Only 88 teams out of 1,756 worldwide were selected for participation in the final competition, including 20 American teams.

Cain said that Stanford’s regional opponents, which included the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Washington and UC-Berkeley, were particularly strong.

“Stanford isn’t the only good school in the region — in fact, our region is considered to be one of the most competitive in North America,” Cain said. “Five schools are always vying for the top two spots so they can go to Worlds.”

Despite the challenge presented in the regional round, the Stanford team expects the final round will be significantly harder.

“These are the smartest and brightest students you can imagine,” Heintzman said. “Still, Stanford has demonstrated the potential to be up there in the top. We hope for great things in Tokyo.”

Cain said the contest’s problems and the event itself have far-reaching applications in the modern world.

“Students who participate in these contests gain a fluency in advanced material and gain the experience needed to solve real problems in research and industry,” he said.

Heintzman said he hoped the contest would highlight the success of both the students and the new technology.

“We want to expose the best and brightest students to state of the art tools, and many [of them] are offered internships at IBM,” he said. “We also hope the contest will highlight the importance of technology and technology skills in a small and flat world.”