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IDT Announces Results of 2017 Programming Contest

Arlington, VA—March 21, 2017—Innovative Defense Technologies (IDT), provider of automated solutions for complex defense systems, announces the winners of its annual student Programming Contest. This year, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) of Alexandria, VA placed first; Oakton High School (Oakton, VA) came in second; and a second team from TJHSST finished third.

IDT’s annual student competition focuses on innovative methods of implementing automated software testing while solving a proposed problem. This year, students created solutions to a problem surrounding Black Box Testing. Over 20 teams initially registered to participate. The 2017 problem was released in December and team solutions were due on February 17. Final submissions were reviewed by IDT judges and the top three teams presented their solutions on Saturday, March 18, 2017, at the IDT office in Arlington, VA.

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The contest problem this year took the students through many aspects of the software engineering process, including: requirements, design, implementation, verification, and ultimately, delivery to a customer. Teams had several check in points along the way.

According to Seth Watts of IDT, “We gave the teams several precompiled java applications, but did not include the source code, so that each application was essentially a black box. We also provided a basic testing framework that could execute the black box java applications and collect code coverage metrics after each run. The teams were challenged to use the code coverage results to direct the inputs used in subsequent iterations of testing with the goal of achieving high code coverage and finding as many unique exceptions as possible.”

The first place team from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) consisted of Shwetark Patel and Antioch Sanders.  The second place team from Oakton High School, coached by Edmund Lau, included: Aveesh Kachroo, Troy Neubauer, Grace Qian, and Courtney Tern. The third place team, also from TJHSST, consisted of: Kevin Geng, Grey Golla, Eric Wang, and Charles Zhao. They were coached by Tom Rudwick.

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“This year, the three finalists were extremely close,” said contest organizer Thom Garrett, “Their solutions were creative and intelligent. The live presentations were especially good. It was obvious that the students knew their material well and had spent a lot of time developing their solutions.” The top three teams earned cash awards for the Computer Science departments or clubs at their high schools, as well as electronic devices and T-shirts for their participation.

IDT’s annual programming contest is open to high school students in Virginia, Maryland, and DC. It is run by IDT employees for the benefit of students in the local community. For more information about future contests, visit https://IDTus.com/contest. Additional photos from the event will be posted on IDT’s Facebook page.  www.facebook.com/IDTus.

About IDT

Innovative Defense Technologies (IDT) is an Arlington, Virginia based provider of automated solutions for the Department of Defense (DOD). Using patented methodologies and technologies, IDT is changing the way software is developed, tested, and analyzed for large, complex DOD systems. The company’s solutions are accelerating the delivery of capability to the warfighter. IDT was founded in 2006 and has additional offices in CA, MA, and NJ. For more information: https://IDTus.com.

Media Contact:

Janice Voth
4401 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA  22203
703.807.0055