Competitive Programming Team Advances to 2026 ICPC North America Championship

Three competitive programming teams from Northwestern participated in the 2025 International Collegiate Programming Contest’s (ICPC) North America Mid-Central Regional Contest, held Nov. 8 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Together, the three teams—MREEOWWW, DisjointFenwickForestDP, and 3y0b—finished as the fourth-best school.

One of the world’s most prestigious algorithmic programming competitions for university students, the ICPC challenges teams of three to collaboratively solve complex algorithmic problems under time constraints.

Northwestern’s ICPC teams were coached this year by second-year computer science PhD student Phawin Prongpaophan, building on a foundation established by previous coaches, including former postdoctoral scholars Dmitrii Avdiukhin (now at Logical Intelligence) and Quanquan C. Liu (currently an assistant professor at Yale University).

“This time, we have three Northwestern teams, and this year we also have newcomers competing and doing quite well,” Prongpaophan said.

Featuring Kellogg School of Management graduate student Pu Yang and third-year computer science students Ryan Liu and Milind Maiti, Team MRREEOWWW is advancing to the next level of competition at the 2026 ICPC North America Championship (NAC), where one team per university competes to qualify for the annual ICPC World Finals.

This is not Liu and Maiti’s first experience with this contest—both were on the Northwestern team that qualified for the NAC last year.

The team met each week for three to five hours, Liu said, working on puzzles tailored by Prongpaophan. Additionally, the group practiced problem-solving skills through activities such as board games and escape rooms, which Liu particularly enjoyed.

With other teams competing this year, Maiti observed that they had the opportunity to participate in more friendly practice competitions with them.

“As our team was more experienced this year, practice consisted more of solving past contests over learning new topics,” said Maiti, who thought qualifying for the NAC was more difficult than expected, describing it as a good wake-up call to practice more. He expects the team to tackle at least three full championship practice contests—each of which runs for five hours.

When asked what he’s doing to prepare for the next round, Liu quipped that he would do many more puzzles because he found them more fun than his own problems.

Liu is grateful for the larger interest in ICPC this year.

Come spring, the team will compete at the NAC in Orlando, Florida, vying for a coveted spot at ICPC World Finals.

“I hope the legacy of Team MREEOWWW has inspired the start of a lasting competitive programming community at Northwestern,” Liu said.