Computing students will gather next week at the 30th annual World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) to compete for $10,000 scholarships, ThinkPad computers, flat-screen

Sponsored by IBM Corp., the three-day final competition will draw 249 talented students from around the world to San Antonio, Texas, said Douglas Heintzman, director of strategy for IBM’s Lotus division, who calls the event "the battle of the brains." The ICPC has been headquartered at Baylor University's main campus in Waco, Texas, since 1989.

"It's quite inspiring to see this much raw potential sitting in one room," Heintzman said.

During the week students will build logic for interactive software games, such as soccer, race cars or basketball. They also participate in massive chess games. A big part of the competition hinges on eight real-world mathematical problems.

Mathematics, physics and <a = "http: www.techweb.com encyclopedia defineterm.jhtml?term="programming"">programming

students intermingle in teams of three. Each group analyzes the series of mathematical problems, such as "finding the optimal configuration for the distribution of cellular phone towers in the metropolitan area that is influenced by population density and obstruction from buildings like mountains," Heintzman said.