A team of two seniors and one graduate student will represent the University of Wisconsin in Tokyo early next month at a worldwide computer programming competition.

Seniors Brian Byrne, Thomas Watson and graduate student Matthew Elder will travel with their coach, Dieter van Melkebeek, as one of the 88 global teams competing for the title of World Champions in the International Collegiate Programming Contest.

More than 6,000 teams representing 1,756 universities entered the contest at the regional competitions last fall, where UW teams took home first and second place.

However, because of tournament guidelines, only the UW "A" squad will be making the trip.

"We call it the programming championships, and it involves them sitting in front of computers, problem solving with a mix of programs [using] engineering and mathematic skills," said Doug Heintzman, director of strategy at IBM, in a phone interview with The Badger Herald. "There are theoretical mathematical questions and real-world examples."

According to Heintzman, the top 12 teams at the ICPC will receive medals, and the winning team will be awarded a $10,000 scholarship, along with various IBM merchandise.

Byrne, who was at ICPC last year in San Antonio, said each team is given five hours to solve between 8 and 12 problems.

"[The prompts] are usually very contrived — almost humorously so," Elder said. "They're set up to put input into output — you have to do some pretty intricate algorithms."

Heintzman said the competition grew from a North American phenomenon in 1977 to the worldwide scope of today.

UW is among only 20 other U.S. teams at the competition facing global squads, who take the competition to another level, Heintzman said.

"Its enormously important — the last two times Russian schools won, they were received personally by Putin in Moscow," Heintzman said. "They are like rock stars in Asian countries."

Van Melkebeek said the UW team trained 40 hours every week before regionals, practicing problems at random. The team now practices every other week, van Melkebeek said, so they do not "burn out."

With stiff competition on the global stage, Byrne said they would have to perform remarkably to win.

"The Russians, the Polish and any Asian nation usually do really well," Byrne said. "They train nonstop throughout the year, spending a lot more time than we do. … It would take a miracle to beat some of them."

According to Heintzman, the competition provides students the opportunity to make a name for themselves and open up career possibilities.

"A very important reason that IBM invests the resources was to expose these very best and brightest students and their faculty to IBM, and hopefully recruit some to come and work for our company," Heintzman said. "Many of our former participants work and take positions in labs for summer internships."

Byrne, who was heavily recruited from potential employers in San Antonio last year, attributes his job directly after graduating in spring to the competition.

"Last year recruiters were all over us — IBM had the rights and Google sponsored our flights out there," Byrne said. "I'm actually accepting a job at Google, and I'm thinking the competition had a factor — we were treated like celebrities."