IEEEXtreme Programing Competition 12.0 Supported by the IEEE Houston Section

It was a Friday, October 19, 2018, at 7pm CST when the IEEE Student Branches at Rice University and University of Houston answered the IEEEXtreme 12.0 Programing challenge. IEEEXtreme is an annual hackathon and competitive programming challenge in which teams of IEEE Student members and supported by Volunteer Proctors who are IEEE member, compete in a 24-hour time span against each other to solve a set of programming problems.

IEEEXtreme was created in 2006 by Marko Delimar and Ricardo Varela who, at the time, were with the IEEE Student Activities Committee. The first IEEEXtreme 1.0 competition was held in 2006 with a global participation of 44 teams and 150 contestants. The numbers more than tripled the second time it was held, in 2008, to 130 teams with 500 participants. The iteration of IEEEXtreme 9.0 in 2015, enjoyed the registration of over 2,300 teams, and participation of over 1,900 teams, 5,500+ student competitors, 600+ proctors, and 100+ volunteers around the world.

This year’s IEEEXtreme 12.0 IEEE Houston Section Student Branch teams saw little to no sleep, excitement, nervousness, and some frustration throughout the 24 hour competition. But on Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 7pm the results were in….the IEEE Houston Section had 7 teams participate, and 5 of those teams stayed for the ENTIRE 24 hours. The UHackers from University of Houston placed #121^st Globally, #10^th in US and #2^nd Regionally, and #1^st at UH, out of almost 150 universities. The YoungSimpleNaive team from Rice University placed #10th Globally, 3^rd in US, and 1^St in the Region beating more than 4,000 universities participating.

For Additional ranking information click here: IEEEXtreme 12.0 Global Rankings

Teams	Global Ranking	USA Ranking	Region Ranking	School Ranking
South
Rice Univ
YoungSimpleNaive	10	3	1	1
University of Houston
AlphaQueue	2100	145	19	6
BigBits	549	41	7	2
Goldencode	2607	185	22	7
Goosebots	795	76	13	4
SmolDKBois	652	52	9	3
UHackers	121	10	2	1
YATCoders	1336	117	17	5

University of Houston Student Branch participants:

Rhema Ike	Matthew Hunter	Javier Garcia
Fernando Martinez	Keith Thompson	Alejandro Venegas
Pio Estepa	Pichvyda Tuy	Wali Chaudhary

Rice University Student Branch participants:

Cheng Wan (Electrical & Computer Engineering Ph.D.)

Xin Hao (Electrical & Computer Engineering Undergraduate)

Kuida Liu (Electrical & Computer Engineering Ph.D.)

This is truly a great reflection of their competitiveness and willingness to challenge what they have learned. The unsung heroes are their prospective university Faculty instructors, Department Chairs and College Deans and the Graduate Assistants. Dr.Badri Roysam, UH Chair of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Professor of Computer Science and Dr. Joseph Cavallaro, Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University.

This year’s IEEEXtreme 12.0 Programing Competition could not exist without the outstanding efforts and support of the IEEE Houston Sections volunteer community. I would like to take time out to thank Rice University Student Branches representative Cam Walton and University of Houston Student Branch representative Javier Garcia for their leadership and coordination efforts.

This also would not be possible without the following Proctor Volunteers from our Section who gave their time in early mornings to late evenings to support the competition efforts.

Volunteer Proctors	Affiliation	Organization – Company
Atilla Kilicarslan	UH	University of Houston
Ahu Han	UH	University of Houston
Zhu Han	UH-IEEE Fellow	University of Houston
Guru Naik	IEEE Rice Student Branch	Rice University
Harry Le
David Mayerich	UH	University of Houston
Neeraj Bhatia	IEEE HOU Sec.	Bechtel Corporation
Moria Hargrove Anders	IEEE HOU Sec. YP Chair	Fletcher Yoder
Fasai Phuathavornskul	IEEE Rice Student Branch	Rice University
Christopher Sanderson	IEEE HOU Sec. Vice-Chair	IEEE R5 South Chair