Lafayette, CO Resident Beats Out 15 Competitors for $100,000 Grand Prize
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(COLLEGIATE PRESSWIRE)--Apr 22, 2002--Stanford University junior Daniel Wright (Lafayette, CO) has won the 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, held at the University Park Hotel @ MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts April 19-20. Wright beat out 15 programmers from some of the nation’s most prominent schools for computer science for the $100,000 grand prize.
TopCoder is a company committed to identifying and promoting computer programming, and uses competitions like these to attract and rate highly skilled programmers. Sun Microsystems, Inc. is the world leader in systems and solutions that make the Net work.
“It’s really nice to win after making the semifinals in last year’s Collegiate Challenge and finishing second in the Invitational,” said Wright. “I would like to thank both Sun and TopCoder for hosting an event that allows students like me to sharpen my Java programming skills and better position me for a great job when I graduate.”
Wright entered the Collegiate Challenge as the second seed in the West region, and beat Ling Li of the California Institute of Technology, Dan Adkins of the University of California-Berkeley, and Joe Nievelt of the Michigan Technological University, in the final round.
“Daniel is arguably the top-collegiate computer programmer in the country,” said TopCoder Founder and Chairman Jack Hughes. “Winning a competition that brought together the top 512 collegiate programmers is a tremendous accomplishment.”
“The quality of the competition was outstanding,” said Stans Kleijnen, vice president, market development engineering at Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Sun is proud to be the exclusive sponsor of the 2002 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, which clearly identified some of the best collegiate programmers in the country.”
Semi-finalists in the tournament were: Ben Wilhelm (Oberlin College), Tom Sirgedas (University of Michigan-Ann Arbor), Nathan Paymer and Po-Shen Loh (California Institute of Technology), James Esser (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities), Trayton Otto (Georgia Tech), Logan Hanks (Virginia Tech), Jon Salz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Eugene Davydov and Ante Derek (Stanford University), Jeremy Haubold (Purdue University), and Ambrose Feinstein (University of Central Florida).
TopCoder leverages the results of the Collegiate Challenge, along with its annual Invitational Tournament, and other weekly competitions, to create a national database of talent-differentiated student and professional programmers.
“TopCoder serves to bring excellent programmers together with leading companies in search of high-tech talent,” said Hughes, a veteran programmer. “We’re confident our programming competitions test and reflect real-world coding skills in a way that’s valuable to our constituents. Our fast growing membership base is already proof of that. By hosting these competitions, TopCoder provides the means for leading companies to assess the upper echelon of computer programmers.”
About TopCoder, Inc.
TopCoder, Inc. organizes and hosts online and onsite programming competitions for its members. With a global membership database, TopCoder members extend across all professional and collegiate levels. The attraction of competition and the associated rewards create a powerful community of programmers. Access to this community is granted to corporate partners who both promote and profit from the relationship. For more information and registration details, visit www.topcoder.com.
About Sun Developer ConnectionSM Program
Building on Sun’s vision to enable services on demand with the latest open technologies, the Sun Developer Connection (SDC) offers individual developers and software development partners a single, worldwide entry point to build a technical and business relationship with Sun. As one of the largest developer communities in the world, the SDC is the connection to Sun for comprehensive resources to build and market solutions leveraging Sun’s open technologies, products, business development, and community forums. All programs, registration and eligibility information can be found at http://www.sun.com/sdc. The Sun Student Technology Associate Representative (STAR) program is designed to empower university students to deliver cutting-edge technology presentations, to their peers and gain valuable experience and industry insight in the process. For more information about the STAR program, go to: http://www.sun.com/developers/evangcentral/students/sunstar.html
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