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Learn about the individuals who oversee and direct ICPC
ICPC Foundation Leadership
Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director
President, CEO, and Board Chair
Dr. Poucher is Executive Director of the ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest and has directed the ICPC since 1988. He has served as World Finals Judge, South Central Regional Director, and a co-coach. He serves on the Board of the UPE Honor Society in the Computing Sciences. Dr. Poucher served as Professor of Computer Science at Baylor University for 40 of his 50 years of university services. He is an ACM Fellow. He is recipient of the University of Warsaw Medal. He developed systems in energy management, communications, synthetic vaccine research, and global enterprise tools. He is a Texan and co-founder of acm.org and the ICPC.
Veronika Soboleva
Director of Development
Veronika is a professional with a solid experience in international public service, cross-cultural communication and project management in such areas as education, public/social infrastructure, and digital city planning. Graduated from Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia), Inalco (France, Paris), EHESS (France, Paris) and Shenzhen Polytechnic University (Shenzhen, China), Veronika is fluent in 5 languages and has been actively involved into several international philanthropic and charity organizations focused on education since 2009. Veronika has joined the ICPC in 2018 and currently leads development and fundraising activities of the organization.
Steve Bourne, ICPC Director of Ceremonies
Member, Board of Directors
Steve Bourne serves as Director of Ceremonies for the ICPC World Finals and has volunteered since 2002 in many roles. He is well-known as the author of the Bourne Shell, which is the foundation for the standard command line interfaces to Unix. Bourne spent nine years at Bell Labs with the Seventh Edition Unix team. As well as the Bourne shell, he wrote the adb debugger and “The UNIX System”, intended for a general readership. Bourne has worked at Silicon Graphics, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems. From 2000 to 2002 he was president of the Association for Computing Machinery. Bourne was chief technology officer at Icon Venture Partners, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, through 2014. He is also the chair of the editorial advisory board for ACM Queue, a magazine he helped found when he was President of the ACM. He is the recipient of the UPE Honor Society Abacus Award.
Jo Perry, ICPC Executive Committee, ICPC Director of Judging
Member, Board of Directors
Jo started working with the ICPC Finals contest in 1986 as a judge. She has served as ICPC Finals Judge, ICPC Finals Chief Judge, and ICPC Director of Judging. She has been a fulltime faculty member in Computer Science at NC State University, worked with several tech startups, and provided IT consulting for two major banks. In addition to consulting, Jo currently teaches one CS course at NCSU.
John Clevenger, ICPC Technical Director
Member, Board of Directors
Dr. John Clevenger has been actively involved in the planning and execution of nearly every ICPC World Finals since 1989. He has been a Coach, Contest Director, Contest Judge, Regional Contest Director, and Steering Committee member for multiple International Regional Contests. He currently serves as ICPC Technical Director. He also oversees the ongoing development of PC2, the most widely used programming contest support system in the world. Dr. Clevenger also has over 40 years of experience teaching a wide variety of computer science topics. He is the developer of several software frameworks and tools for teaching graphics and game architecture, and is co-author of a textbook on computer graphics. He is also a performing jazz musician, and spends summer vacations in his mountain cabin.
James Comer, Director of Regional Contests, Emeritus
Member Emeritus, Board of Directors
Dr. James R. Comer served as the Director of Regional Contests Emeritus for the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) and on the Executive Council for UPE. He served as Chair of the Texas Christian University (TCU) Department of Computer Science, where he served on the faculty since 1981. James was a co-founder of the ICPC, dating to the early 1970’s. He served as a regional contest director, Finals Judge, and World Finals Director over nearly 50 years of service to the ICPC global community. He was a founder of ICPC Foundation. He passed in 2022.
Joe DeBlasi, ICPC Executive Committee
Member Emeritus, Board of Directors
First recipient of and namesake of The ICPC Joseph S. DeBlasi Outstanding Contribution Award. Mr. DeBlasi joined IBM in 1964, where he had worldwide responsibility for IBM product standards and IBM’s relations with national and international standards and technology organizations. He has served on several government delegations. After retiring from IBM, Mr. DeBlasi became Executive Director and CEO of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He retired from the ACM in 1999, serving as Chairman of Decision Systems Inc., a computing and management consulting firm, and as co-managing partner of the IMI-DSI LLC, a New York information technology consulting firm. He also serve on the Board of Directors of a number of non- profit and cultural organizations, including COMAP and ICPC. He was a founder of ICPC Foundation. He passed in 2022.
Roman Elizarov, NEERC Chief Judge, ICPC Executive Committee
Member, Board of Directors
Roman Elizarov is a professional software developer. He designed and developed high-performance trading software and market data delivery services. He is an expert in Kotlin, Java and JVM, particularly in concurrency, algorithms and performance optimizations for modern architectures. Roman currently works on Kotlin language at JetBrains. In 2000 Roman had graduated from St. Petersburg ITMO. He now teaches a course on concurrent and distributed programming in ITMO. During his undergraduate study he participated at International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). Since 1997 and until now Roman serves as a Chief Judge of Northeastern European Regional Programming Contest (NEERC) of ICPC.
Mohamed Fouad, ICPC ACPC Executive Director
Member, Board of Directors
Eng. Mohamed Fouad serves as the Director of Logistical Operations for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the Executive Director of the Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC), and the Arab Regional Director of the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Competition. Under his leadership, the ACPC has grown 2567% in the past five years, with the participation of 45 teams in 2011 increasing to 1200 competing teams in 2016 coming from 13 countries. Mr. Fouad holds the position of Head of Scientific Activities Department in AAST Regional Informatics Center.
CJ Hwang, ICPC Executive Committee; Governor ICPC Asia Regionals
Member, Board of Directors
Dr. C. J. Hwang, PhD, (“CJ”) is the founder and ICPC Director of Asia Contests, which constitute 40% of the participants of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. He is a Professor at Texas State University and author of two books in Chinese literature. CJ has also been active in business and international public service.
Ali Orooji, ICPC Executive Committee; Governor, ICPC North America Contests
Member, Board of Directors
Dr. Orooji served as the first Director of North America for the ICPC and a member of its International Steering Committee. Dr. Orooji has been the faculty advisor for the UCF Programming Team since the 1989-1990 academic year. During this time period, the team has never placed below third in the regional competition. Dr. Orooji also organized the UCF High School Programming Tournament. Dr. Orooji served as a member of the Executive Council for the National UPE from 2000-2012. He established the UPE chapter at the University of Central Florida (1991) and has been the faculty advisor for the local chapter.
Marsha Poucher, Board Member
Member, Board of Directors
Marsha H. Poucher served as ICPC Contest Manager from 1998 to 2014, retiring in 2017. Prior to that time she assisted the Contest Manager and the Executive Director. She is regarded as the Mom of the ICPC. She is the recipient of the UPE Honor Society Abacus Award. Marsha is a graduate of Auburn University. She taught from 1970-1975.