Michigan Tech
Michigan Tech Student Wins $5,000 in TopCoder Competition

HOUGHTON--Michigan Tech undergraduate Joe Nievelt finished in the money last weekend at the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, held April 19-20 at MIT.

The computer science sophomore took home $5,000 of the $150,000 purse for his fourth-place finish in his first visit to the national computer-code-writing contest. The competition began in February, with hundreds of college contestants participating at the regional level.

He is the son of Susan Nievelt, of Royal Oak, and a graduate of George A. Dondero High School.

"I didn't expect to get this far in my first major TopCoder tournament," Nievelt said. "I met some great people and had a wonderful time. I'm going to use the $5,000 to help pay off student loans, and to buy my school books."

Nievelt entered the Collegiate Challenge as the second seed in the Midwest Region and advanced to the finals by winning his semifinal round on Friday, April 19. He has won a total of $9,530 since he began competing in TopCoder's programming competitions in June 2001. He has earned a rating that ranks him 13th among all 11,000 TopCoders in the nation.

"This is so cool," said Dr. Linda Ott, chair of Michigan Tech's Department of Computer Science. Nievelt is the first Michigan Tech student to advance to the finals in the TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, she noted, and his performance was exceptional.

"I noticed that the student who took third place is working on a PhD at Berkeley, so for Joe to come in fourth behind someone with those credentials is just astonishing."

Nievelt faced some fierce coding competition and was the sole Midwesterner to reach the final round. The $100,000 champion is Daniel Wright, a junior from Stanford University attending his third high-level TopCoder event. Ling Li, a PhD student at the California Institute of Technology, was second and won $25,000. Dan Adkins, a PhD student at the University of California at Berkeley, finished third and won $8,000.
The other 12 competitors each received $1,000.

"Joe should be very proud of himself," said TopCoder founder and chairman Jack Hughes. "Finishing fourth out of the 512 collegiate programmers who began this tournament is a tremendous accomplishment."

4/22/02--MTN038