COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (Dec. 5, 2005) – A Tennessee Tech University computer programming team earned third place honors in the regional contest of the 30th annual “Battle of the Brains,” sponsored by IBM and held recently at the university.

Winning team members are Wesley Bland of Knoxville and Joe Schutte and Aaron Smith, both of Brentwood.

Contestants, all made up of teams of three, had five hours to solve up to eight complex, real-world computer programming problems that require team collaboration to rank the difficulty, deduce requirements, design test beds and build software systems.

The winning team solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time.

TTU was one of 144 sites in 71 countries and on six different continents to host such a regional competition.

Eighty teams will advance to the contest’s World Finals April 9-13 at Baylor University in San Antonio, Texas.

--Tracey LeFevre
This information posted 6 December 2005