University of Utah computer engineering students demonstrated their final projects on Dec. 11 to cap off the CS 4710 Senior Project course.

“We’re very proud of our Computer Engineering Senior Capstone Project class. In this yearlong course students work in teams to design and build projects of their own choosing, using skills and knowledge gained as they go through the program. During the event, each student had a chance to shine, having produced another set of impressive set of projects.

“As an educator, it’s tremendously satisfying to see students take information from years of coursework and synthesize that into impressive and innovative team projects,” said Erik Brunvand, course instructor.

All projects were required to each have an original software and hardware design component.

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University of Utah School of Computing Professor Ross Whitaker has been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. The AIMBE College of Fellows represents the most accomplished and distinguished medical and biological engineers responsible for innovation and discovery.

Whitaker was voted on by the College of Fellows Selection Committee. His election into the college now makes him eligible to become a member of a select group of the top 2 percent of medical and biological engineering professionals.

AIMBE is a non-profit society that serves as the leading voice and advocate for the benefit of medical and biological engineering to the public.

The team, “Uncompilables,” which includes students William Li, Liam Machado, and Samuel Zachary, beat 52 other teams in the U.S. and Canada to win the competition. Their first-place finish qualifies them for the World Finals in Thailand next May. 

"William, Liam, and Sam performed brilliantly — their years of practice prepared them well. Thanks to these three, the U has finally beaten the Canadians (and their training program) in grand style,” said Peter Jensen, associate professor in the U’s School of Computing and team coach.

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is the premiere global programming competition conducted by and for the world’s universities. The competition is operated under the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), is sponsored by IBM, and is headquartered at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Teams of three students represent their universities in multiple levels of regional competition. Volunteer coaches prepare their teams with training and instruction in algorithms, programming and teamwork strategy.

In the contest, teams attempt to solve as many programming problems as possible in five hours. Each year, the event has always been competitive with the Canadian teams usually winning due to their yearlong training programs. The Uncompilables team members solved the same number of problems (eight) as the second-place team but won the contest because they were slightly faster.

The last time the University of Utah won the regional competition was in 1998.