The University of Oregon is located in Eugene, a vibrant city of 172,000 with a wide range of cultural and culinary offerings, a pleasant climate, and a community engaged in environmental and social concerns. The campus is within easy driving distance of the Pacific Coast, the Cascade Mountains, and Portland.
The Department of Computer Science is part of the College of Arts and Sciences and is housed within the Lorry Lokey Science Complex. We offer a stimulating and friendly environment for collaborative teaching and research within and with other departments on campus.
Luks Programming Contest
Each year the CS Department sponsors a programming contest open to all UO students. The contest is a competition between teams to see which team can produce the most working programs to solve a set of problems. Teams are organized into two divisions: graduate division teams consist of two graduate students, and undergraduate division teams consist of three undergraduate students. The members of the winning teams from each year have their names inscribed on a plaque on display at the CS Department. The competition is a fun challenge of programming skills and teamwork and can be good preparation for the UO teams for the ACM Programming Competition.
The contest is named to honor Professor Emeritus Eugene Luks, who organized the first contest and continued the tradition with annual contests. Professor Luks continues to contribute problems and participates in contest judging.
For the contest, teams are given several problems to solve within three hours. Solutions to the problems are programs that accept the input described in the problem statement and produce the output specified. The team that solves the most problems wins, with ties being decided by the time of submission of the team's working solutions, plus time penalties for incorrect submissions. Participants have the use of one computer workstation for each team.
The Twenty-Fourth Annual UO Eugene Luks Programming Competition will indeed be held this year on May 14, 2022.
The programming contest is being resurrected this year after two years off due to pandemic restrictions. It will be held in room 100 DES on Saturday, May 14, 2022. 1:00pm-4:00pm. If you are interested in competing, please contact the front office but also look for email updates.
UO Eugene Luks Programming Competition Rules
The programming contest will take place in the CS Computing Lab in Deschutes Room 100. The contest itself will be approximately three hours long. Each team will be assigned an iMac workstation in the Computing Lab. The name of the workstation will be the team's name and will also be the login ID that will be used on the workstation.
The contest will begin promptly at 12:00 PM with a practice problem so that you can make sure you know how to submit a solution. Contestants should be there at least a few minutes early to find their teammates and find your assigned workstation. Light refreshments will be provided.
Remember that this is intended to be a fun competition!
Contest Policies and Rules
Each team can use only the single assigned workstation and login ID. You may use any written or printed material that you have brought to the competition. During the contest, participants may not use any other computing resource (e.g., workstations in offices, notebook computers, calculators, etc.)
- Commands available for use are those in the standard path as set by /cs/etc/path. This will include standard editors and compilers.
- You may not change the command search path or execute commands by full path name.
- Certain commands such as internet browsers, ftp, ssh, rlogin are expressly prohibited. In general, there is to be no access of the internet or any other system through the network (not even to read your email!).
- There is to be no access of files outside of the login directory for the team (e.g., you cannot access files or tools from your personal home directory or another team's).
Format of competition
The contest will consist of five problems. Do as many as you can.
Submission of solutions
This year we will use the PC^2 Software that is used by the ACM Programming Competition. The software is used to submit solution programs (in source form). After logging in to the iMac with your team name, you will execute pc2team to log in to the contest software. Your login will be of the form teamN where N is a number assigned to the iMac. You will be given the team number and password for your workstation. To submit a problem solution, you will select the problem, select the language of your solution, and select the file(s) comprising your solution. The file names are of your own choosing, as you will browse for the files.
Scoring
Scoring will be done by the PC^2 Software used to submit solutions. Ranking is determined by the number of correct solutions which have been submitted. For teams with the same number of correct solutions, the team with the least cumulative submission time is ranked first. However, each incorrect solution submitted for a problem that is eventually solved correctly will incur a time penalty.
Judging
Your submission is in source code form. Depending on the language, your solution will be compiled by the judges, and then run with some test input data (which may be more extensive than the sample given in the problem description). Your program must produce the correct output for the test data, and cannot execute for longer than two minutes. The PC^2 Software will notify you of the judges' result - whether your solution is correct or not. Sometimes additional information will be given, e.g., your program did not compile, or the execution time limit was exceeded. You may receive an automated "Preliminary Judgement" on your submission which would then be followed by a final manual decision by the judges.
Problem description clarifications
Through the PC^2 Software, you may request clarifications of the problem statement. These should not be frivolous questions, or questions that try to get hints for a solution; they should be legitimate questions to clarify problem wording or assumptions. All teams will be able to see clarification requests and their resolution.
Contest duration
The contest will end three hours after the official start. The PC^2 Software will constantly display the amount of time remaining.
Work areas
During the contest, contestants are not to converse with anyone except members of their team and judges. Extended conversations among team members should be conducted outside of the contest room. Feel free to make use of rooms 127, 137, 160, 220, 260 or any place in the halls of the first and second floors of Deschutes. If you have an office in Deschutes, do not access it during the contest.
Contest Scoreboard
The current team ranking will be displayed on the Smartboard in Room 100.
Determination of winners
The PC^2 Software will show the final ranking after the contest ends and the last submitted solution is judged. Although there will be a single ranked list of all teams, grad and undergrad teams compete separately.
Juilfs Programming Contest
In spring term of each year, the CS Department holds the Annual Juilfs Programming Competition. The purpose of the competition is to encourage interest in programming among CS majors, potential majors, and other students interested in problem solving and programming. The contest is open to UO and LCC students who have taken 100-level or 200-level CS courses, but have not yet started any 300-level CS courses. During this activity, students have the opportunity to exercise their problem solving knowledge and programming skills in a fun and challenging environment.
The contest takes the form of a competition among teams to see which team can produce working programs to solve the most problems of varying difficulty levels. Teams consist of two students, writing programs in languages they have learned in the lower division courses. The winning team is the recipient of the Juilfs Award and the members' names will be inscribed on a plaque on display at the CS Department. All students participating in the competition will receive a competition T-shirt. The competition is a fun challenge of programming skills and teamwork, and can be good preparation for the various other programming competitions, coordinated by the CIS Department.
For the contest, teams are given several problems to solve within three hours. Solutions to the problems are programs that accept the input described in the problem statement and produce the output specified. Solving a problem will earn a specified number of points, based on the difficulty of the problem. The team that earns the most points wins the contest, with ties being broken by having the least amount of time accumulated to submit working solutions. Each team will use just one computer to work on the problems. For more details, see the contest rules.
The Juilfs Programming Contest was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to the campus safety closure.
The Eleventh Annual Juilfs Programming Contest was held on Saturday, June 1, 2019
- Three teams (six students) of undergrads competed. There were 5 problems and the first place team solved all five.
- First Place: Sam Peters, Hsiang Thum (5 problems, 29 points)
- Second Place: Sarah Kitten, Nathan Strassmaier (3 problems, 17 points)
- Third Place: Alex Angel, Nathan Malamud (3 problems, 16 points)
- Problem Designers: Jeanie Chen, Chase Craig, Kathleen Freeman, Kellie Hawks, Noah Palmer
- Judging: Zach Bower, Chase Craig, Kathleen Freeman, Noah Palmer, Nolan Rudolph, Chris Wilson
The Tenth Annual Juilfs Programming Contest was held on Saturday, June 2, 2018.
- Seven teams (twelve students) of undergrads competed. There were 5 problems and the top two teams solved four.
- First Place: Alex Vischer (4 problems, 35 points)
- Second Place: Nolan Rudolph, Bethany Van Meter (4 problems, 35 points, tie broken by time))
- Third Place: Helena Klein, Colin Maxwell (3 problems, 27 points)
- Problem Designers: Trevor Enright, Jordan Lewis, Amber Straub, Joe Sventek, Chris Wilson
- Judging: Alonzo Altamirano, Chase Craig, Ram Durairajan
Contest Policies and Rules
The programming contest will take place in the CS Computing Lab in Deschutes Room 100. The contest itself will be approximately three hours long starting when all teams have submitted the practice problem. Each team should bring a notebook computer (one per team) on which they will code and test their program solutions.
The contest will begin promptly at 10:00 AM with a practice problem so contestants can make sure they know how to submit a solution. Contestants should be there at least a few minutes early to find their teammate and choose a place to work. Light refreshments will be provided.
Remember that this is intended to be a fun competition!
Resources
Each team can use only a single notebook computer. If neither team member has a computer of their own, the team may use one of the iMac workstations in the lab. You may also use any written or printed material that you have brought to the competition.
- Teams should make sure they have installed and configured the programming tools (e.g., Java or C++ compiler, Python interpreter, editors) that they plan to use for programming problem solutions.
- You may access the internet during the contest. However, any code you submit should be your own. Wireless access is available throughout Deschutes, but the team should configure their machine prior to the contest if it is not already configured for the uowireless network.
Format of Competition
The contest will consist of five problems. Each problem will be worth some number of points as specified in the problem description. The more points, the harder the problem is likely to be. The winning team will be the team with the most points. In the event of a tie, the winning team will be the first to have submitted the final correct solution.
Programming Languages
Problem solutions may be coded in C, C++, Java, or Python. The language versions are GCC 4.8, G++ 4.9, Java 1.8, Python 2.7, and Python 3.6.
Submission of Solutions
Solutions will be submitted in source form and should be named by the single letter (or letter and digit) identifying the problem and an extension indicating the type of program, e.g., A.cpp or A.java or A.py. Each solution must consist of just a single source file, although that source file may contain many class and function definitions. In the case of Java, there must be exactly one public class and its name must agree with the source file name.
To submit a problem solution, click this submit link. You will choose a problem, and browse to your program source code to submit for the problem solution. If you have not logged in yet as a team, you will be prompted to do so.
Scoring
Each submitted solution that is correct will earn the specified number of points for the problem. Ranking is determined by the point total of the correct solutions which have been submitted. However, each incorrect solution submitted for a problem that is eventually solved correctly will incur a penalty of one point subtracted from the total, so it is important to only submit a solution when you are fairly certain that it is correct.
Judging
Your submission is in source code form. Depending on the language, your solution will be compiled by the judges, and then run with some test input data (which may be more extensive than the sample given in the problem description). Your program must produce the correct output for the test data, and cannot execute for longer than two minutes. You will be notified of the judges' result on the results whiteboard in room 100. The result will be whether your solution is correct or not. Sometimes additional information will be given, e.g., your program did not compile, or the execution time limit was exceeded.
Problem Description Clarifications
You may request clarifications of the problem statement. These should not be frivolous questions, or questions that try to get hints for a solution; they should be legitimate questions to clarify problem wording or assumptions. Clarification requests may be submitted by writing the request on a notepad that will be provided in the contest room. Clarifications will be written on the big whiteboard in room 100.
Contest Duration
The contest will end three hours after the official start.
Work Areas
The contest will take place in Deschutes Room 100. During the contest, contestants are not to converse with anyone except members of their team and judges.
Contest Scoreboard
Submission results will be displayed on the results whiteboard in room 100. The team rankings will be released immediately after all last minute submissions are judged.
Graduate Student Research Poster Contest
The UO-CS Graduate Research Open House will be held on May 28, 2025 in Deschutes Hall, the home of Department of Computer Science in the University of Oregon campus. It will provide a unique opportunity for graduate students to showcase their research and connect with faculty, staff, and peers. The event will center around a graduate student poster competition, accompanied by a guest speaker talk, PhD graduates panel, an award session, and more.
Graduate students who are interested in participating in the poster competition are required to submit a poster and a 3-minute video presentation. All submitted posters will have the opportuntiy of display in the Deschutes Hall and published on the event website to help increase the visibility of students' research. This will be a great opportunity for students to showcase their research and get feedback from faculty and peers. As part of the poster competition, the poster review committee will judge the posters and award prizes to the top 8 posters. The winners will be announced at the end of the event.
Best Poster Awards
Cash prizes will be awarded to the top 8 posters, with the following distribution:
- 1st place award: $1200 (1 poster)
- 2nd place award: $700 (1 poster)
- 3rd place award: $400 (2 posters)
- 4th place award: $200 (4 posters)
Important Dates
All submission deadlines are end-of-day in the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone:
- Poster Submission Intention: May 8th, 2025
- Poster Submission: May 21th, 2025
- 3-minute Video Recording: May 26th, 2025
- Grad Open House Day: May 28th, 2025
Poster Formatting Guidelines
To be announced
Judge Rubrics
- Poster Quality (score: 1-10): Evaluates the visual appeal, clarity, and organization of the poster. High-scoring posters are well-designed with logical structure, readable fonts, appropriate use of visuals (graphs, images), and minimal distractions. Lower scores indicate clutter, hard-to-read text, or poor layout.
- Presentation Quality (score: 1-10): Assesses the speaker's ability to communicate their research effectively. Criteria include clarity of speech, confidence, engagement with the audience, and time management. High scores reflect a compelling, well-rehearsed presentation.
- Research Novelty and Impact (score: 1-10): Judges the originality and creativity of the research question, methodology, or application. In addition, the committee will measures the significance and potential impact of the research. This includes contributions to the field, real-world application, or potential to inspire future work. A top score indicates a highly innovative and impactful project that addresses an unexplored or emerging problem.
Where to Submit
To be announced
Prior Contests