Trio in battle of brains

A team of three young computer whizzes from Waikato University will compete at one of the world's most prestigious programming competitions next year.

Matthew Law, Tom Levy and Ryan Smith will fly to Yekaterinburg in Russia next July to attend the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest world finals. But forget that mouthful - it's also known internationally as "Battle of the brains".

The competition is less of a battle between nations and more a battle between universities and colleges. The team will be one of 120.

The team was placed third in the South Pacific finals in Auckland last month. It's huge kudos for Waikato University as it's the first time since the 1990s that a Waikato University team has qualified for the world event.

The competition sees teams given five hours to solve complex, real-world programming problems.

Matthew said time management and team work were important, as was managing their resource - just one computer between the three of them.

The team will finalise a rigorous training regime this summer that will see them take part in practice competitions.

All three are in their second year of double degrees in computing and mathematical sciences. And while none of the men is certain where their qualifications will take them, chances are good they'll be part of the next generation of elite computer scientists.