BIOLOGY

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. and TopCoder, Inc. announced that Duke University Junior David Arthur, originally from Toronto, Canada, has won the 2003 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, held this past weekend at the University Park Hotel @ MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Arthur prevailed over 15 of the world's best Java and C++ programmers for the $50,000 grand prize and the claim of the world's best college programmer. "What a great feeling this is to be able to compete against the best programmers in the world. I really didn't think I had much of a chance against these other guys," said Arthur. "I'm also really thankful to TopCoder, Sun and Nvidia for putting on such an exciting and professional event." Arthur went into the tournament semifinals on Friday as the Southeast Regional Champion. He was also the number one seed in that region for this tournament. Arthur is on a full academic scholarship at Duke University where he is currently in his Junior year. Coming into this weekend, his total prize money from TopCoder was just over $16,000. He won the majority of his TopCoder winnings last fall when he finished in third place in the 2002 TopCoder Invitational. "Given the intense competition of this year's Collegiate Challenge, David should be proud to be the Collegiate Challenge Champion," said TopCoder founder and Chairman, Jack Hughes. "Winning a competition that invited the top 1,000 collegiate programmers around the world is a tremendous accomplishment." "Once again TopCoder has provided the platform for future thought leaders to exhibit their skills using Java to solve multivariate non-trivial problems," said Stans Kleijnen, vice president, market development engineering at Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun is proud to sponsor the 2003 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, which provides a unique environment for capturing the technical discipline of developing software into an exciting and competitive event for developers and spectators." Arthur beat the following finalists in the championship round: Jimmy Mardell (Umea University) who placed second, Daniel Wright (Stanford University) who finished in third place, and Alan Gasperini (UCLA) who placed fourth. The four tournament finalists triumphed over the following semifinalists in previous rounds of the tournament: Eugene Davydov (Stanford University), Stefan Pochman (Darmstadt University of Technology), Ke Yi (Duke University), Alexey Radul (MIT), Benjamin Mathews (CalTech), Xiaomin Chen (Rutgers University), Ante Derek (Stanford University), Bogdan Stanescu (George Mason University), Tony Chang (University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign), Tom Sirgedas (University of Michigan), Jacob Burnim (CalTech) and Wei Liu (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities). TopCoder's Collegiate Challenge, along with its annual Invitational Tournament and other weekly competitions, has attracted a worldwide member base of talent-differentiated student and professional programmers. Companies interested in hiring competition-driven programmers partner with TopCoder to recruit these members. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) , corporate sponsor of the Collegiate Challenge, was onsite at the tournament finals to recruit these top-notch programmers. "TopCoder doesn't just identify the best programmers in the world, but it recognizes the best programmers who are passionate and determined to win," said Daniel Rohrer, Manager of DirectX Graphics for NVIDIA. "TopCoder provides NVIDIA with a quality source of dedicated and motivated programmers who will thrive at NVIDIA and will be challenged working with our driven team of world-class engineers and developers."