Competitive Programming Team Advances to 2025 ICPC North America Championship
The “MREEOWWW” team won seventh place in the Mid-Central Regional International Collegiate Programming Contest held in November
A Northwestern competitive programming team won seventh place in the 2024 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Mid-Central USA Regional Contest, held last month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The “MREEOWWW” team — named in honor of the Willie the Wildcat growl — includes Northwestern Engineering students Maxwell Chen, a second-year student in computer science; Ryan Liu, a second-year student pursuing a double major in computer science and mathematics; and Milind Maiti, a second-year student in computer science.
Chen, Liu, and Maiti are advancing to the 2025 ICPC North America Championship (NAC) on May 26. Top-performing teams will qualify for the annual ICPC World Finals.
“We hadn't participated in a team event before, but we did have some experience with algorithmic problem-solving,” Maiti said. “Earning seventh place is a validation of the many hours that we put in to qualify for the NAC, and a testament of how far we've come as a team.”
Competing against 81 regional teams from colleges and universities in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, the team “MREEOWWW” solved 11 and attempted one of the total set of 15 problems during the five-hour, on-site contest. The Mid-Central USA Regional contest is one of the 11 regional contests comprising the North American super-region.
“The experience was extremely stressful,” Chen said. “However, it was definitely one of the more exciting moments in my life when we ended up advancing.”
The “MREEOWWW” team was neck and neck with team “WUSTL 1” from Washington University in St. Louis and clinched the final regular spot — WUSTL 1 also advanced as a wildcard due to the close competition.
“If we had one more wrong submission, Washington University would have beaten us. The whole experience was an absolute thrill,” Liu said. “Our advancement to NAC is extremely rewarding, and it motivates us to push our limits even further. It’s a reminder that with dedication and teamwork, we can achieve what once seemed out of reach.”
Phawin Prongpaophan, a second-year PhD student in the Northwestern CS Theory Group, coaches the team. He has participated in competitive programming for around nine years, entering both the ICPC World Championship and the International Olympiad in Informatics.
Prongpaophan explained that the logistics of the ICPC season presented a challenge for the Northwestern team. With only about six weeks between the beginning of fall quarter and the ICPC regionals, the team held training meetings twice a week.
“I appreciate the effort of all three students,” Prongpaophan said. “Seeing them grow and earn a spot in the NAC against more experienced competitors in a very limited amount of time is huge.
“Although the number of trials is not enough to invoke tail bounds for confidence interval, their performance in the regional contest reminds me that low probability does not imply impossibility,” Prongpaophan continued. “This reminds me to keep fighting against any challenges in life.”
Problems have varying degrees of difficulty and incorporate five programming languages — C, C++, Java, Kotlin, and Python 3. Each three-member team at the Mid-Central USA Regional Contest was provided with one shared workstation. Teams are prohibited from possessing any electronic devices during the competition, except for simple watches.
During the competition, teams submit their solutions to an automated judging system. Rankings are based first on the number of problems solved and then on the time to solve the problem. Problems solved in multiple attempts receive time penalties.
2025 ICPC North America Championship
Looking ahead to NAC, the “MREEOWWW” team has established a friendly internal competition: the member with the lowest rating is treating the group to dinner.
Chen thinks the best way to ensure success is for the team to strive for “red coder” status on Codeforces, a competitive programming platform.
“That would be the equivalent to Grandmaster status in chess,” Chen said. “I'm aiming to solve at least a thousand more competitive programming questions before the championship.”
“We’re looking forward to tackling more challenging problems, testing our problem-solving ability, and representing Northwestern University on a national stage,” Liu said. “Although some teams were far ahead of us at the regional competition, we’ll see what we can do to close the gap in the next six months.”