NDSU earns top finishes in AI computer programming competition
Teams of up to three students designed and coded an AI agent to play a video game.
Students from NDSU swept the top awards at this year’s Byte-le Royale, a 12-hour artificial intelligence programming competition hosted by the NDSU chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Nick Althoff, competing as Team Wah, took first place and earned $150. Katie Mckenzie, competing as Team Callisto, placed second and received $100. Third place went to Hunter Ferrell, Colten Kiehne and Logan Felknor of Team Engineering, who each received $50.
Byte-le Royale is a 12-hour programming competition in which teams of up to three students design and code an AI agent to play a video game. Teams compete head-to-head to determine whose AI performs best by the end of the day.
This year’s event was held Saturday, Feb. 7, from 9 a.m. to about 11 p.m. The in-person competition took place at the Quentin Burdick Building on the NDSU campus. The event was also accessible online, with a livestream on Twitch and discussion hosted through the event’s Discord server.
The event was open to anyone in teams of three or fewer. To maintain fairness, non-undergraduate students were not eligible for prizes and were excluded from the final rankings.
The Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, helped organize and host the event through its NDSU student chapter. The organization supports professional development, research and collaboration in computer science and related fields. Events like Byte-le Royale are designed to give students hands-on experience, encourage teamwork and sharpen problem-solving skills in a fast-paced environment.
Winners were announced at the conclusion of the competition following a full day of coding, testing and strategy adjustments.