YWCC Students Rank Among Best at ICPC Regionals for Third Year
The Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) Programming Club has proven once again that they are formidable competitors to some of the best schools in the Mid-Atlantic region at the 2025 ICPC North America Greater New York Regional Contest held at Columbia University, with one team scoring in the top 20 among the likes of Princeton, Cornell and Columbia.
The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) invites university teams to compete in what is considered the top algorithmic programming contest for college students in the world. Those that win at the regional and national level will advance internationally.
Although the YWCC Programming Club has not yet gone beyond the regionals, they have consistently ranked in the upper third against some of the Mid-Atlantic’s highest caliber universities and colleges, several of which are Ivy League institutions.
This year, NJIT-foo, comprised of team leader Dominic Attalienti, Christopher Bandeli and Nino Chkhaidze, were ranked No. 20 out of 80 teams.
Attalienti has also served as the unofficial president of the club after his predecessor graduated in May. “I ‘inherited’ it as the only non-freshman,” he observed.
He credits former club leadership for creating a solid foundation on which to follow, but last year’s addition of Assistant Professor Martin Kellogg as mentor, himself a former ICPC competitor, was when NJIT quickly began to gain momentum among many elite institutions with computing programs.
Practicing feverishly for five hours, two times per week since the beginning of September under the tutelage of Kellogg and Prof. Jim Geller, both of whom supplied the team with brain teasing practice problems, also significantly improved their formula for staying ahead in the game.
Attalienti is no stranger to what can be a very stressful competition, having been part of last year’s team that likewise took the No. 20 spot. Competitors must solve a collection of complex, real-world algorithmic challenges within five hours amidst myriad distractions around the large room, particularly from other teams that can get caught up in the excitement, and ICPC personnel who move about with discerning eyes.
Nevertheless, his veteran status conditioned him to not only “focus on us,” but bring the team briefly to an initial No. 7 status by being the first person in the entire competition to solve one of the most difficult puzzles.
“At that point, I was confident that we could get into the top 10,” he said.
NJIT-bar, with Berat Yigit, Atif Ejazi and Dheeraj Motupalli, fighting valiantly, came in at No. 55, which for a team of first-time freshman, is meritable given the stiff competition.
Attalienti was emphatic in his praise of his exclusively freshman classmates on both teams and views their talent as the catalyst to bring them even further than their predecessors in the years to come. “Mark my words.”
In the interim, until graduation in May, his goals include having the YWCC Programming Club finally gain official status through the student senate – and, of course, continuing to help the members increase their skills and stamina for next year.
Beyond the experiential learning of developing abstract problem-solving skills in pressurized situations, Attalienti is inspired by collaborating among peers who think similarly and have the same passion for computing that he does.
“I could code these types of problems all day. Doing it in a group of likeminded people is even more exciting!” he exclaimed.