Beverly Hills, Calif. may have been abuzz with the Academy Awards last week, but the competition has shifted from prima donnas to programmers.

Three computer science majors are exercising their problem-solving skills at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest, held March 22-26.

The Cy-Random team of Josh Carlson, a recent ISU graduate; Brett Kail, junior in computer science; and Josh Woods, sophomore in computer science, earned a spot to compete among 20 teams from North America and 70 from around the world.

Yan-Bin Jia, team coach and assistant professor of computer science, said he expects them to do well at the competition.

“They are very good at writing code in a short time,” Jia said.

The trio had to pass through several levels of competition to make it to the Beverly Hills world final.

Woods said the students first competed in a local contest to determine who would make up Iowa State’s team.

The Cy-Random team then went to the regional competition in Lincoln, Neb., in November and earned third place out of more than 150 schools from the upper Midwest and Canada.

“It is a large region,” he said. “So we were asked to [compete in the world competition].”

Woods said problems from the regional competition involved improving communication for an imaginary planet.

“We had to figure out how to connect subscribers to a service with the least amount of cable,” he said.

The team that answers the most questions correctly in the least amount of time wins, Woods said.

Woods said he got involved with the contests after receiving an e-mail from the Computer Science Club about the local event.

Kail said he took part in weekly programming contests on the Internet. After receiving an e-mail from the club, he said he and Woods decided to participate. Woods and Kail were on their own team when Carlson joined them.

“I was an odd man out at the other contest and performed well,” Carlson said. “We were put together.”

Jia said despite the students’ inexperience, their performance has been impressive, especially because they have not taken advanced algorithm data structure courses.

“The problems require technology that is quite advanced,” Jia said.

Jia said the contest is more about problem solving than programming. The team has practiced by doing old problems .

Jia said each team member has his own strength. He said Kail is inquisitive and a fast typist, Carlson excels at writing codes and Woods is good at finding information.

“They are a good combination,” Jia said.

Jia said three years ago an ISU team won at the regional competition and placed 20th at the final competition. Jia said the European and Asian teams are usually stronger because they spend more time programming.

“It is hard for any American team to be among the Top 10,” he said.

According to the ACM Web site, http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/, the first contest was held in 1977 and has now expanded into the oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest in the world