Three student teams from the University of Missouri-Rolla will compete this
weekend in a 24-hour programming contest in Illinois.

MechMania, to be held Oct. 12-14, is an annual programming contest hosted by
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s student chapter of the
Association for Computing Machinery. A UMR team won the competition in 2006. A
total of 16 student teams from the Midwest are expected to compete this
year.

Students will have roughly 18 hours to write artificial intelligence for a
game. Details of the game, the application program interface and framework will
be announced Friday evening. The 16 teams will then compete on Sunday morning
in a double-elimination tournament. The top team will receive $375 and other
prizes.

UMR students competing in the challenge are members of the university’s ACM
chapter. Team members include:

• Richard Allen of Kirksville, Mo., a senior in computer engineering

• Matt Bruemmer of Florissant, Mo., a junior in computer science

• Jeremy Forster of Platt City, Mo., a sophomore in computer science

• Brian Goldman of St. Louis, a sophomore in computer science

• Charles Huber of Rolla, Mo., a graduate student in computer science

• Bobby Mertens of St. Louis, a junior in computer science

• Justin Miller of Rolla, Mo., a graduate student in computer science

• Ben Murrell of Lees Summit, Mo., a senior in computer science

• Raymond Myers of Columbia, Mo., a graduate student in computer science

• Zach Zeman of Linn Creek, Mo., a sophomore in computer science