The University of Science and Technology was the only local university to make it through to the finals.

The contest required teams solving eight computer science problems covering artificial intelligence, computer graphics, robot planning, networking and game simulation.

All finalists were crammed into a single competition hall and whenever a team solved a problem, a balloon was hung above their monitor.

'The excitement there was indescribable - whenever a balloon was hung up above another team's terminal, we would drive ourselves harder, University of Science and Technology contestant Ngan Sai-fong said. 'We solved five questions in 41/2 hours, and had it not been for the fact that we missed one keyboard stroke, we would have made it into the top five.' Assistant professor and coach Dr Michael Stiber said he was confident the team would make it into the top five next year.

'It will be a challenge for next year's team to top what we've achieved this year. In our training for next year we will focus on improving our strategy as to which questions to answer first, who answers what questions, the time allocated for each question and so on,' Dr Stiber said.

The University of California, Berkeley, won the contest.