BIRMINGHAM, AL — The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Computer and Information Sciences recently hosted the inaugural UAB High School Programming Contest. The event was designed to bring talented ninth through 12th grade students from schools throughout Alabama to UAB to participate in an organized computer programming competition, provide them the opportunity to meet and interact with UAB faculty and learn about new topics in computer science.

In the competition, students were asked to demonstrate their programming skills and problem solving abilities by attempting to solve six programming problems within a three-hour period. The problems had various levels of difficulty and had to be coded in Java, C#, or C++.

Rankings were based on overall score, which was determined by the number of problems solved correctly and the time it took to solve them. All students who competed received a T-shirt and a certificate of participation. The top 15 students each received a computer science textbook. In addition, the top three students each received a Microsoft XBox, gift certificate and license to use Microsoft Visual Studio. They were:

• Scott Goodfriend, Alabama School of Math and Science
  
  
• Timothy Lovorn, Alabama School of Math and Science
  
  
• Peilong Cong , Alabama School of Fine Arts

The contest, which will be an annual event at UAB, was sponsored by the UAB Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Birmingham-based technology solutions company CTS Inc., and Microsoft.